Police perceptions of restorative justice: Findings from a small‐scale study

• Published date: 01 December 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21235
• Date: 01 December 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Police perceptions of restorative justice: Findings

from a small-scale study

Paul Gavin | Allyson MacVean

College of Liberal Arts, Bath Spa University,

Bath, UK

Correspondence

Paul Gavin, College of Liberal Arts, Bath Spa

University, Newton Park Campus, Bath BA29BN,

UK.

Email: p.gavin@bathspa.ac.uk

This paper considers the views and perceptions of police

officers and staff from a local police force in England, on

the training provided in, and use of, restorative justice.

These views were obtained through the use of an online

questionnaire as well as the recording of comments made

by police officers and staff after one training session.

While the overall sample is too small to draw any concrete

conclusions, participants appeared to share views

expressed in similar, larger studies. This study adds to the

literature on restorative justice as police views in this area

are underresearched in England and Wales.

1|INTRODUCTION

There can be no doubting that there has been a revival in the fortunes of the development and use of

restorative justice (RJ) in England and Wales in recent years (Acton, 2014). Examples of this revival

include increased funding for Youth Offending Teams to expand on the use of RJ, the introduction of

a Code of Practice for Victims of Crime, giving victims the right to information about participation in

RJ schemes, which implements the EU Victims’(2012) Directive 2012/29, and the introduction of

the Crime and Courts Act (2013), which introduced RJ for victims of adult offenders in England and

Wales (Hoyle & Rosenblatt, 2016). Also, between 2011 and 2014 the National Offender Manage-

ment Service “embarked on a restorative justice capacity building programme …to increase aware-

ness and build capacity to deliver RJ conferencing in both prisons and probation”(House of

Commons Justice Committee, 2014, p. 6). Another area which has seen a significant expansion in the

use of RJ has been policing. Research undertaken by the Association of Chief Police Officers (2009;

cited in Shewan, 2010) revealed that RJ is being used in at least 33 police forces in England and

Wales. In 2013, the Ministry of Justice announced that at least £29 million would be provided for

Police and Crime Commissioners to help deliver RJ in their local police areas (Ministry of Justice,

2013). This shows that RJ is no longer an option which sits on the fringes of the criminal justice sys-

tem, but rather one which has come from the margins into the mainstream (Collins, 2015; González,

Buth, & Sattler, 2018).

Received: 10 May 2018 Revised: 3 August 2018 Accepted: 8 August 2018

DOI: 10.1002/crq.21235

© 2018 Association for Conflict Resolution and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Conflict Resolution Quarterly. 2018;36:115–130. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crq 115

Given the increased use of RJ by the police in England and Wales, this paper could be considered to

be timely, as it considers the perceptions and views of police officers and staff in one local police force on

the training they received in and the potential use of Level 1 RJ. These views were obtained through an

academic partnership between Bath Spa University, Wiltshire Police, and the Office of the Wiltshire Police

and Crime Commissioner. This paper presents an examination of the literature on police-led RJ programs

both in England and Wales and internationally. The use of such programs has grown considerably in the

last 20 years and they are now used in many jurisdictions, including Australia, the Republic of Ireland, and

Northern Ireland. It then considers and analyzes the findings of this study. However, in order to have any

meaningful discussion on the topic of RJ, consideration must be given as to how RJ is defined. This discus-

sion is necessary as it sets out the parameters for the use of the term RJ in the overall study.

2|DEFINING RJ

One of the most enduring problems of RJ is that of definition (Jones & Creaney, 2014). Daly (2016)

notes that while those familiar with RJ have “a settled idea of what it is …[the] definitional problem

is aggregating all the individual understandings into a coherent whole”(p. 11). It has been described

as both a movement (Richards, 2004) and a philosophy (Braithwaite & Strang, 2000; Gavrielides &

Artinopoulou, 2013), which can mean all things to all people. As such, this has resulted in RJ being

“a deeply contested concept”(Johnstone & Van Ness, 2007, p. 6). Given that RJ has been a part of

the criminological discourse for several decades, its meaning has undergone significant change, and

the use of the term restorative is “now applied to a variety of practices—community reparation

boards, surrogate victim (or offender meetings), community service, and so on. It is also now used in

myriad settings such as schools, prisons, and workplaces, and in contexts including not only criminal

justice but transitional justice (i.e., truth and reconciliation commissions), institutional responses to

abuse, and so on”(Wood & Suzuki, 2016, p. 150). Providing a universally agreed-upon definition of

RJ is next to impossible, “not least because its advocates themselves adhere to different conceptions

of RJ and what it should achieve…Even the name ‘RJ’has been criticized as misleading for the

implication that restorative approaches are a form of justice”(Sheary, 2016, pp. 157–159).

There are many definitions of RJ and they are usually dependent on the context in which it is being

discussed. For example, in the Republic of Ireland, it has been defined as a “victim sensitive response

to criminal offending, which, through engagement with those affected by crime, aims to make amends

for the harm that has been caused to victims and communities and which facilitates offender rehabilita-

tion and integration into society”(National Commission on Restorative Justice, 2009, p. 20). The

Restorative Justice Council (2009) in the United Kingdom defines it as processes which “bring those

harmed by crime or conflict, and those responsible for the harm, into communication, enabling every-

one affected by a particular incident to play a part in repairing the harm and finding a positive way for-

ward.”Zehr (2002) has defined it as “a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a

stake in a specific offence and to collectively identify and address harms, needs,and obligation, in order

to heal and put things as right as possible”(p. 37), while Umbreit, Wilson, and Roberts (2006) statethat

RJ involves the provision of “opportunities for those most directly affected by a crime to be actively

involved in the process of addressing harms, needs, and obligations. RJ is about offender accountabil-

ity, victim healing, and community safety, through mediation and dialogue whenever possible.”A

widely recognized definition was put forward by Marshall (1999), who, when researching RJ for the

Home Office in the United Kingdom, defined it as “a problem solving approach to crime which

involves the parties themselves and the community generally, in an active relationship with statutory

agencies”(p. 5). While there is no universal definition of RJ, Marshall's is widely accepted as it refers

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