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The purpose of the paper is twofold. First it examines the use of restorative practices in the Youth Justice System. Second the paper seeks to critically assess the benefits of Restorative Justice (RJ) at the pre-sentence stage in England and Wales, particularly in terms of its ethical and practical application.

The paper takes the form of a conceptual analysis. The authors draw principally on the experiences of a small scale pilot into the use of pre-sentence RJ and data from in-depth interviews with one of the pilot sites. A snapshot survey and discussions with a Youth Offending Team piloting pre-sentence RJ was also undertaken.

The authors find that the level of personal involvement of victims in RJ has fallen short of expectations. The authors note that if there is to be reduced stress and trauma for victims participation needs to be independent of coercion or reward. Offenders who are lacking in sincerity should not be coerced or pressured into accepting pre-sentence RJ as this could, despite benign intents, exacerbate feelings of anger and distress for victims. The authors also note the importance of practitioners being properly trained in RJ conferencing as they have a fundamental part to play in mitigating against some of the potential risks.

The paper identifies issues and ambiguities with pre-sentence RJ and examines in detail the complexities of working in such an environment. The paper will be of use to local and potentially national decision makers and commissioners of RJ programmes.

The authors explore the under researched concept and delivery of pre-sentence RJ.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the settings, mechanisms and beneficiaries of restorative justice, querying whether a single procedure can have the wide-ranging benefits – to victims, offenders and the broader community – which have been attributed to restorative justice.

The paper assesses the claims made for restorative justice in the light of contemporary British experience, taking evidence from the published evaluations of three Home Office-funded restorative justice schemes (Shapland et al., 2004, 2006a, 2007, 2008).

It is found that ideas of community have played little part in restorative justice practice in Britain, but that restorative justice may benefit both victims and offenders. Given the differing needs of the two groups, it is suggested that this may be conditional on the prior articulation of relationships of interdependency – which in turn may strengthen informal communities.

This paper clarifies the distinct benefits offered by restorative justice to victims and offenders, and reconceptualises the relationship between successful restorative justice practice and informal community relationships.

It was nearly twenty years ago that Howard Zehr (1990) wrote the first book about Restorative Justice (Changing Lenses), John Braithwaite (1989) wrote about “Crime, Shame and Reintegration” and New Zealand introduced the family group conference – a restorative process for resolving matters when children and young people became involved in offending.11Family group conferences are also used in the child welfare system when options are being considered for children thought to be in need of care or protection. These events marked the transition from a theoretical debate about alternatives to Western models of criminal justice to the recognition of a new theory, a new set of values and a new practical alternative to the Western-style court system. Since then, theory has evolved and many other jurisdictions have experimented with various processes for delivering restorative justice (Johnstone & Van Ness, 2007). Perhaps the most common form, especially for young people has been the use of the restorative conference in youth justice. From its beginnings in New Zealand, it has spread to Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Ireland, Macao, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Tonga, Thailand and the United States of America. Many different forms of restorative family conferencing for young people who have offended have emerged in these different states, provinces and countries for many different types of offences and for people from many different cultures. In this chapter, I want to briefly review what has been learnt about the transferability of the process. In particular, what are the questions that have been largely resolved and what issues still remain unresolved? And what are the key conditions which must be met for the process to work in different jurisdictions and among different peoples and what aspects of the process tend to vary to reflect the diversity of cultures and customs within and between peoples in various areas?

After setting the political and personal contexts, defining key terms, and comparing Indigenous and restorative justice, I clarify three interrelated sites of contestation between and among feminist and anti-racist groups as these relate to alternative justice practices. They are the inequality caused by crime (victims and offenders), social divisions (race and gender politics), and individuals and collectivities (rights of offenders and victims). I outline an intersectional politics of justice, which seeks to address the conflicts at each site. My intersectional framework attempts to align victims’ and offenders’ interests in ways that are not a zero sum game, and to find common ground between feminist and anti-racist justice claims by identifying the negotiating moves each must make. It proposes that victims and offenders have positive rights that are not compromised by collectivities.

The learning disability nursing role in the multi-professional Youth Offending Team (YOT) enables the recognition, acknowledgement and understanding of the needs of people entering the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and provides a platform to ensure appropriate identification, assessment, planning and delivery of care ensuring successful completion of the Order and subsequent recidivism and reduction in reoffending. The purpose of this paper is to share the experience of working with young people who have committed a crime and are found to have unmet or undiagnosed additional needs.

This paper seeks to consider how learning disability nursing skills compliment the range of expertise in the multi-professional YOT and discusses the case of a young woman and her experience of the CJS from pre-sentence to completion of the Order.

Working together enables effective care delivery to ensure the needs of the person are recognised, understood and acted upon and achieves a balance between welfare for the person and justice and understanding for the victim.

This paper’s value is to demonstrate that recognition of need enables the appropriate intervention and delivery of care. Through working together a reduction in young people returning into the CJS as well as building skills and understanding in staff working with young people with additional needs can be achieved.