Restorative justice referrals, victim participation, increase again in 2025

This is the seventh annual collection and publication of data to map the use of restorative justice in Ireland’s criminal justice process. Datasets were previously published for 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (together), 2023 and 2024. The headline figures for the new (2025) sweep are:

• The Probation Service and five Community-Based Organisations received 1030 referrals to explore restorative justice, the highest figure since we began collecting data in 2019. It represents a 22.3% year-on-year increase from 842 referrals in 2024.
• These organisations reported completing at least 185 cases involving a victim in either face-to-face dialogue (55) or indirect dialogue (130) with an offender. This is a 36% year-on-year increase from 136 cases identified as involving victims in dialogue in 2024, most of which reflects an increase in cases involving indirect dialogue (up from 88 cases).
• There were also 369 Garda restorative cautions in 2025, a 23.8% year-on-year increase from 298 in 2024. While we do not generally estimate the extent of victim involvement, all cases were reported to be s.26 cautions which allow for victim participation.
• Including every provider captured in this mapping exercise, a total of 1399 referrals were reported in 2025, a 22.7% year-on-year increase from 1140 referrals in 2024.

These data represent increases from 2024 and are our highest overall figures recorded to-date. Still, while agencies’ annual reports for 2025 are not yet published, this figure is likely to represent only a fraction of 1% of the criminal justice caseload. Ireland has made some progress, but has a long way to go before all victims and offenders can access restorative justice.

This mapping exercise includes data relating to the work of all eight organisations formally involved in offering restorative justice in the criminal justice process. All seven organisations that submitted figures for the mapping exercise in 2024 (Cornmarket Project, Le Chéile Mentoring, the Probation Service, Restorative Justice in the Community, Restorative Justice Services, Northwest Restorative Justice Service and Athy Alternative Project) also submitted data in 2025. I also report data from the Garda Síochána on their use of restorative youth cautions in 2025, released to Aidan Farrelly TD in response to a Parliamentary Question.

This article includes a summary of the data collected, compared with previous years and including caveats and limitations of the dataset. Despite these limitations, this release is the best available indicator of the scale of restorative justice provision, trends, and year-on-year variations in Ireland. I then explore developments in restorative justice services and policy in 2025, including a significant increase in the geographical scope of Community-Based Organisations that provide restorative justice, the inclusion of restorative justice in the 2025 Programme for Government and the publication of the Probation Service’s Restorative Justice Action Plan 2025-2027.

As ever, I am indebted to the many people who spent time collating the data and for their permission to continue publishing this dataset in full. To see the full dataset for 2025, please click here. To see all annual datasets from previous years, please click here.

Referrals and victim participation in 2025

Excluding An Garda Síochána-led restorative cautions to which I will come later, providers included in this mapping exercise reported receiving 1030 referrals and completing at least 646 cases in 2025. Of 646 completions, a victim participated in a dialogue process with a perpetrator directly (55) or indirectly (130) in at least 185 cases. These figures likely underestimate restorative justice in Ireland because some of these organisations deliver processes which were not counted in the figures. For example, while the Probation Service referral figures include the entire service, the completion figures are for cases facilitated by the Restorative Justice and Victim Services Unit only. Our figures also omit processes facilitated by other bodies (e.g., in Youth Diversion Projects) or by independent practitioners (e.g., in institutional abuse cases) which are adjacent to criminal justice but outside of the criminal justice process, on which we focus for this exercise.

The referral numbers differ from completion numbers because referrals that are received in one calendar year may be worked on and completed in the next year, while not all participating organisations provide data on the type of process delivered. Thus, our figures underestimate how many cases involved indirect victim-offender dialogue, assuming that some of the cases in which there is no record of victim-offender dialogue involved the victim and their perpetrator exchanging information, or questions and answers, through a facilitator. There remains a need to standardise and improve data collection across restorative justice providers, which many services recognised in the conversations we had about this mapping exercise.

The limitations of the case completion data informs the decision to continue focusing on the referral figures, as in previous years. This enables us to track a single metric year-on-year for trend analysis, although the figures may include referrals later deemed unsuitable. Table 1 shows the total number of referrals identified each year since this exercise started in 2019, inclusive and exclusive of Garda restorative cautions. The same data are reproduced graphically in Figure 1.

On a mobile device? Please view the below table in landscape.

Table 1 – Annual referrals to restorative justice and % year-on-year change

Figure 1 – Annual referrals to restorative justice and % year-on-year change

We have previously opted to make limited interpretations of the 2020-2023 figures due to COVID-19 and its impact on the courts. We note that the 2025 figures represent an increase on 2024. This could indicate that restorative justice is being used more widely year-on-year, although we do not know whether the proportion of court cases referred is increasing, nor the distribution of referrals by court or judge. Overall, referrals remain low enough that they could decrease significantly year-to-year if, for example, a District Court judge who regularly refers were to retire or be elevated. We also do not know the percentage of Garda youth cautions in 2024 or 2025 which were restorative, as those years’ Annual Reports have not yet been published.

Some organisations submitted other figures which help give a greater sense of their work. For example, submissions to this mapping exercise suggest that:

• at least 121 victims declined to participate in restorative justice after a restorative justice provider made contact with them to offer them the chance to do so. As Restorative Justice in the Community, An Garda Síochána and the Probation Service (beyond the Restorative Justice and Victim Services Unit) did not provide data on the number of victims to decline participation, this figure is likely an underestimate;
• at least 187 cases involved offences with identifiable victims who could not be contacted to offer them the opportunity to participate. In most such cases, the Gardaí did not furnish a restorative justice provider with a victim’s details. Again, some providers did not submit data on this question, so this is likely an underestimate.
• An Garda Síochána work only with children; the Probation Service work with people of all ages but did not report separate restorative justice data for children due to low caseloads; Le Chéile, Restorative Justice Services and Restorative Justice in the Community provided a breakdown of referrals by age; the remaining Community-Based Organisations only take adult referrals. Therefore, we know that at least 417 of the 1399 referrals (29.8%) including restorative cautions involved cases where the offender was a child.

That the Probation Service and Community-Based Organisations mostly report completing cases that do not involve victim-offender dialogue reflects several factors:

• many (likely most) cases referred to restorative justice are offences without direct victims, such as drug possession or sale and supply, and certain public order and driving offences. All providers have models of practice which involve working with the offender, their family, their community and/or various professionals or proxy victims in such cases;
• restorative justice is voluntary. Not all victims, when contacted, wish to participate either directly or indirectly in a restorative process; and,
• in many cases referred which have direct victims, restorative justice providers are unable to obtain their contact details from the Gardaí to offer them the chance to participate. The reasons for this vary and have not been directly studied.

Finally, An Garda Síochána do not provide a breakdown of cases, aside from stating that the figure of 369 restorative youth cautions relates to section 26 of the Children Act 2001. Section 26 of the Act provides for the presence of the victim at a formal caution, but we have previously opted not to assume that all restorative cautions involved victims’ participation because of a lack of clarity in some years as to whether the figures included s.29 cautions or cases which involved restorative processes without involving a direct victim. Additionally, in some years, we have not had access to the Garda data at the same time as data from the other bodies, informing the decision to treat Garda restorative cautions separately in our analysis.

We do recognise, however, that many (or, perhaps, all) of the 369 s.26 restorative cautions could have involved victims in some way. Juvenile Liaison Officers, who deliver cautions, receive training in both mediation and restorative practices. Some have also provided restorative justice training to practitioners in other organisations and are otherwise instrumental in the development and delivery of restorative justice in Ireland. Depending on how many restorative cautions involve direct and indirect victim-offender dialogue, the Garda Síochána may even be the largest provider of victim-offender dialogue in Ireland’s criminal justice process.

Policy and service developments in 2025

Alongside increases in referrals in 2025, we saw the retention of a reference to restorative justice in the latest Programme for Government, which states that the Government will ‘continue to roll out nationally the voluntary restorative justice programme’ (p.119). Indeed, 2025 did see a geographical expansion in Community-Based Organisations which deliver restorative justice. The Probation Service ran an Expressions of Interest competition to recruit and manage restorative justice workers in Donegal, Sligo, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth. Once these workers are in place, there will be a Community-Based Organisation available to deliver restorative justice in 24 of the 26 counties. This follows a similar process in 2024, resulting in funding allocated to Community-Based Organisations to provide restorative justice in Kilkenny, Carlow and the South West region. It has not been publicly stated how these expanded Community-Based Organisations will receive referrals, but previous expansions indicate that they will at least be able to take referrals from the Courts and Probation Service. In November, Citizens Information published revised information about restorative justice in Ireland, which will require updating once new workers are in place.

Last year also saw the publication of the Probation Service Restorative Justice Action Plan 2025-2027. This ‘focuses on further developing and enhancing the delivery of restorative justice within the Probation Service’ (p.2), but also includes a range of externally-focused actions relating to the expansion of national provision through Community-Based Organisations, communication and advocacy, developing the evidence base and advancing restorative justice in Ireland.

The Action Plan is published here. To read my analysis of its implications for accessibility, collaboration and framing restorative justice see here. The Probation Service’s Restorative Justice and Victim Services Unit reports continuing its collaboration with Probation’s Community Service Team to introduce Probation clients on community service and community return to restorative justice and victim empathy, enabling their participation in restorative justice. They facilitated five workshops in 2025, attended by 46 clients and seven community service supervisors.

Also in 2025, Restorative Justice Services published its Strategic Plan for 2026-2029. This outlines five priorities around delivery, awareness, partnerships, capacity and investing in people. The Strategic Plan can be read here. Restorative Justice Services were also one of three recipients of funding from the Community Safety Fund for a project with a restorative orientation (see here). Finally, the Cornmarket Project reported training 195 professionals in the REFRAME model across the statutory and community justice sectors. REFRAME (Restorative Engagement For Reparation and Motivating Empathy) is described as ‘a training model that integrates restorative justice and motivational interviewing, with a strong emphasis on ensuring the voice and experience of those harmed are central to the process’.

Conclusion

The 2025 data suggest that the availability and use of restorative justice has risen, but that it still plays a marginal role in criminal justice. Continued growth in service provision and referrals are both important steps towards a system in which every person may decide whether restorative justice is right for them. It will also be necessary for the sector to collaborate to co-design shared language so that everyone can easily understand what restorative justice involves, and consistent recording methods so that we can better understand and monitor how restorative justice is being referred and delivered in criminal justice in Ireland.

Government and Probation Service commitments need to be supported by resources, by law and policy change and by whole-of-sector collaborative agreements, moving from a situation in which restorative justice is marginalised and inaccessible, to one where it is available equally for all crime types, across the whole country and at all stages of the criminal justice process. We still lack a referral pathway for the adult caution and, although provided for in the Criminal Justice (Victims of Crime) Act 2017, at the pre-charge/pre-conviction stages. Services’ budgets limit their capacity to be proactive and strategic in expanding pathways and accessibility.

As resources are ploughed into many other areas of criminal justice, and it is increasingly recognised that traditional criminal justice seldom meets victims’ needs or supports desistance, it is more crucial than ever to invest in evidence-based approaches like restorative justice.