ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, we illustrated the process of restorative justice conferencing, as undertaken by JRC, using a small number of case studies. In this chapter we shall focus on restorative justice events and see how participants experienced them and what happened in them from our observations. For indirect mediation, we shall need to consider the flow of information between victim and offender as conveyed by the mediators. Restorative justice events, as we have seen, are complex. We shall be concentrating upon a number of areas which have been suggested to be key in making an event restorative: inclusiveness, participation and procedural justice; dealing with emotion and the effects of the offence; problem-solving for the future; building social and human capital; as well as bringing in community. All these stem from the original definition of restorative justice which all three schemes adopted: ‘Restorative justice is a process whereby all parties with a stake in a particular offence come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future’ (Marshall 1999: 5).
