Restorative Justice Evidence What do we know? Where are the gaps? - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Restorative Justice Evidence What do we know? Where are the gaps? - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Restorative Justice Council The Forgiveness Project QuickTime and a Ministry of Justice decompressor are needed to see this picture. Restorative Justice Evidence What do we know? Where are the gaps? A seminar hosted by Lord Stone of


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SLIDE 1

Restorative Justice Evidence What do we know? Where are the gaps?

Heather Strang University of Cambridge

QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.

Restorative Justice Council The Forgiveness Project Ministry of Justice

A seminar hosted by Lord Stone of Blackheath 5 February 2013

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SLIDE 2

What we know already

A good deal about face-to-face RJC:

– About victims - very positive for those choosing to take part – About offenders - more complicated

  • Different offences (serious/violent vs trivial)
  • Different offenders (adult vs juveniles)
  • Different points in the justice system (‘in addition’ vs

‘instead of’ normal cj processing)

  • Procedural justice as well as reoffending outcomes

– About costs (Shapland et al evaluation)

  • Across total costs of crime - 8:1
  • Across cj costs only - 2:1
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SLIDE 3

What kind of RJ is happening in UK?

  • Programmes springing up all over

– Many police-led (Community Resolutions etc) – Mostly for juveniles – Mostly trivial offences – Mostly explicitly to save money

  • Evidence-based?

– Little attention to research findings – Little programme evaluation (with honourable exceptions - West Midlands Police and TV Police)

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SLIDE 4

Where are the research gaps?

  • Evaluations of programmes already in place
  • RJ for specific offenders (e.g. ethnic

minorities)

  • RJ for specific offences (domestic abuse,

sexual offences)

  • Long-term effects of RJ
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SLIDE 5
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SLIDE 6

Methodologies for specific research gaps

  • Depends what you want to achieve
  • To find out whether one ‘treatment’ works

better than another

– Nothing beats a randomised controlled trial – ‘Level 3’ experiments - before/after measures with a treatment and a comparison group - can provide useful findings

  • Anything less often as time-consuming and

expensive as an RCT (esp when you add the cost of a useless programme)

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SLIDE 7

Methodologies (continued): for programmes already in place

  • To find out how well a programme is running -

process evaluation (monitoring and

  • bservation)
  • Essential step prior to outcome evaluation
  • To gauge participant satisfaction and other

attitudes - interviews (but beware response rates)

  • Need to ‘build in’ evaluation measures with

programme development - so reliable data available to evaluators

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SLIDE 8

Evaluating RJ with sensitive populations

  • First develop the programme (experience with RISE

and consequent role with JRC research)

  • Some research already available in domestic abuse

and sex offences (US, Canada, UK, NZ, Australia)

  • a little available on ethnic minority offenders
  • Growing recognition that RJ may have a role for

these offences

  • Some preliminary data on effectiveness may be
  • btainable by methods less rigorous than RCT - but

how useful? how reliable?

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SLIDE 9

Methodologies (continued)

  • To assess long-term effects

– Follow-up interviews – Need for high quality contact information – Well trained (and persistent) interviewers – A questionnaire that focuses on the crime, its aftermath,the justice experience, life events (esp how RJ/not RJ affected their lives) – Evidence so far shows that effects could not have been predicted (RISE victims/offenders c.f. Indianapolis)