PROJECT TITLE: Restorative Justice in Europe: Safeguarding Victims & Empowering Professionals
COUNTRIES: EU Member States
OVERALL OBJECTIVE:
- To produce practical results that will be directly used by decision makers, policy makers and practitioners in the UK, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany and the Netherlands in their national implementation of the proposed EU Victims’ (particularly Articles 11 & 24) and Protection Measures Directives;
- To implement RJE’s practical results in the target Member States and to disseminate the practical results across the EU;
- To promote minimum victim’s safeguards and standards across Europe when restorative justice is applied will enhance trust among victims and EU citizens in the adequacy and implementation of the rules of each member state. These common rules should then lead to increased confidence in their criminal justice systems, and the promotion of a fundamental rights culture in the EU.
ACTIVITIES:
Main activities included:
- Review & Theoretical Development: desk research at exising evidence from the 6 participating countries and internationally;
- Action Research & New Evidence: action research in the 6 participating countries with victims, offenders and professionals so as to collect new knowledge;
- Production: use of evidence from the previous activities so as to produce protocols and guidelines for victims’ safeguards, training programmes for professionals and best practice guidance for multi-agency cooperation;
- Pilot & Implementation: piloting the protocols, guidelines, training programmes, best practice guidance in various institutions and contexts in the participating countries (e.g. in prisons, police, probation, the community);
- Dissemination, Cooperation & Awareness Raising: wide dissemination of the project’s scientific and practical results and actions for their wider implementation in Europe.
FUNDING AGENCY: European Commission
LEADER: The Independent Academic Research Studies (IARS) in the UK
PARTNERS: EPLO, The Institute of Conflict Resolution in Bulgaria, the University of Applied Sciences for Public Administration Bremen in Germany and the Restorative Justice Netherlands
TIME FRAME: 2012–2014