RJC Anti-Racism Statement
The Restorative Justice Council acknowledges the harm caused by both explicit and implicit bias due to racial discrimination, both in the past and present, and the need to take pro-active steps to prevent this in the future.
Aims: The Restorative Justice Council (RJC) is committed to anti-racism approaches to challenge and address the conditions that hold systemic racism in place. These are conditions where bias and prejudice are built into systems, policies, processes, resource access, practices, relationships and power dynamics. Our strategic anti-racism plan will set out how the RJC’s staff, Board, and work programme will embody an anti-racism approach.
Definition of racism: The RJC defines racism as a combination of ideas, practices and policies that produce and normalise inequality based on racial categorisation. This includes prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their being identified with a particular racial or ethnic group that is marginalised based on historical power relationships.
Intersectionality: The RJC recognises the importance of acknowledging intersectionality -the understanding of our own and other people's unique lived experiences of disadvantage and oppression. Aspects of an individual’s social and personal identity such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, disability, gender reassignment, marriage & civil partnership, pregnancy & maternity, sexual orientation, and religion & belief, combines to influence a person’s privilege and power in society. Hence, it is important to consider all the factors that can intersect to profoundly marginalise people.
The RJC will:
- Ensure our organisational leadership and culture embodies anti-racism
- Be an anti-racist employer and working environment
- Promote fairness and build an inclusive workforce that is representative of the communities and organisations the RJC and its membership serves
- Proactively strive to ensure representation at all levels of the charity
- Collaborate with the restorative justice sector, our members and partners, to promote and evaluate the sector’s anti-racist stance
- Incorporate an anti-racism agenda into our organisational development, our policy and research work, our training, our registration processes, and our innovations
- Integrate anti-racism into our brand, media campaigns and communications in general
- Nurture an environment of listening and learning to unlearn racism
- Provide opportunities for learning which challenge beliefs, habits, complacency and comfort zones, that maintain the status quo, wherever they occur
- Actively embed anti-racism in our day-to-day activities to ensure better access, experience and outcomes for those using restorative justice / practice services and for the communities they serve.
Next steps
- Develop our anti-racism action plan covering workforce, service delivery, and other organisational areas
- Detailed implementation plans will be signed off by the Board in July 2023
- Publish our anti-racism action plan by August 2023
- Implementation progress will be monitored by our Policy and Communications sub-committee comprised of Board members and staff throughout the remainder of 2023