A dispute settlement service in North Carolina was asked in 2002 by the jurisdiction in one county to mediate cases involving charges of 'assault on a female' brought to the district criminal court.
Research was undertaken to compare domestic violence reoffending outcomes two years after mediation with outcomes two years after a court appearance or a prison sentence.
For defendants without previous criminal convictions, the reoffending rate was significantly lower for those who went to mediation than of those who went to trial.
In September 2001, the Home Office released two studies on the use of restorative justice. These were An Exploratory Evaluation of Restorative Justice Schemes and An International Review of Restorative Justice. Each report provides cautions and suggestions for implementing restorative justice programmes.
At a UN meeting in April 2002, a resolution was passed that puts restorative justice officially on the international map.
The International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council (ISPAC) of the United Nations asked for its committee responsible for victims to prepare a report on restorative justice.
The report considered different approaches to restorative justice and concluded there was a need to set standards.
This report summarises the results of the AGIS project on meeting the challenges of introducing victim-offender mediation in Central and Eastern Europe (JAI/2003/AGIS/088) that the European Forum for Victim-Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice coordinated between December 2003 and November 2005 with the financial support of the European Commission.
A controlled study on the effects of restorative conferencing on victims of crime has shown that it reduces post-traumatic stress symptoms.
The study was performed by Dr Caroline M Angel, a lecturer in criminology at the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. As significant as it is unusual, the study took a clinical approach, finding that conferencing had measurable positive effects on the emotional health of victims of crime.
All those who participate in restorative justice deserve to have access to the highest quality of service available.
The aim of this document is to enable and encourage practitioners and organisations in Scotland to provide this kind of service by establishing nationally recognised standards of best practice.
These three reports, compiled by Dr Derek Brookes, explore whether restorative justice can both contribute to workplace safety and help heal bereaved families after work-related deaths better than the traditional system.
The research was carried out during 2008 and 2009 in Victoria, Australia and makes a number of recommendations in favour of implementing restorative justice for use in such cases.
Transcripts also include a case study of a restorative justice process following a workplace fatality.
