ABSTRACT
Why present restorative justice case studies? The main results of major evaluations of restorative justice have to be couched primarily in quantitative terms, indicating what happened and how many victims and offenders said they found it helpful and so forth. We present these results in the following chapters. What these overall results cannot show, however, are the nuances of interaction in what is a complex process of preparation of participants, the event itself and further contacts. Though restorative justice writers give the impression of emotionally charged, rich events, is this actually so (Elonheimo 2003; Daly 2002)? Restorative justice also takes place over a period of time. Do participants change their views over time? Case studies allow us to show what the experience was like for real people and to analyse difference as well as similarity. Case studies of adult victim-offender conferences are relatively rare in the literature, though they can be particularly useful to allow both researchers and practitioners who have not observed conferences to learn what happens.2 In the context of current discussions in many countries about the respective merits of mediation and conferencing, it seems to us particularly important to illustrate some cases in detail (though without compromising the anonymity of the participants), so that readers can have an idea of what actually happened.
