RJC 4th Annual Conference 

Over the past two years we have all experienced unprecedented challenges through the imposed restrictions on our day-to-day lives but we have also witnessed many examples of communities coming together to provide support, heal and rebuild. Despite this, we are still living in troubled times. We are increasingly seeing cases of interpersonal violence within our communities and find ourselves in times where war, conflict and premeditated acts of violence are becoming more commonplace. Class, gender, generational, religious, racial differences, political and social polarisation continue to leave our communities divided and disconnected and the notion of a just society all the more out of reach.

This is why during this year’s conference we want to explore the potential for restorative justice and practices as an approach to building resilience within our communities. Thus, the theme of the 4th annual RJC conference is ‘Living in Troubled Times - Restorative approaches to building resilience’ 

This year, our conference sessions will focus on one of four areas:

1.          Restorative Justice – interpersonal violence in troubled times

2.          Restorative responses to war, conflict and violence 

3.          Building community resilience in troubled times

4.          Restorative practice and social justice

We are particularly interested to explore how restorative approaches are being used in cases of interpersonal violence. Whether this be violence against women, hate crime specifically homophobic, transgender and xenophobic incidents and the rise in knife crime. We ask, how can restorative practice be visualised and developed in cases of interpersonal violence?

War, conflict and premeditated acts of violence continue to dominate our news. Whether this be the uncertainty of the war in the Ukraine, the reports of war crimes inflicted on Ukrainian communities, the threat, and actual acts of violence instigated by organised gangs, the exploitation of young people through county lines crimes, acts of terrorism both home and abroad and unresolved conflict between communities across the United Kingdom. We ask, how are/can we respond restoratively to war, conflict and acts of violence?

As society starts to normalise, we ask how can we create restorative communities? How do our institutions, including our secure estate, schools, social care providers, health services and religious communities become restorative spaces? How does a community become a space for developing strong and effective restorative relationships?

Finally, in a world where class, gender, generational, religious, racial differences, political and social polarisation continue to leave communities divided and disconnected we want to understand how we can align restorative practice within the social justice movement. We ask, how can restorative practices contribute to developing a just society?

Abstracts can be submitted for consideration in one of the following four session types that will run during the course of the two-day conference: