ABSTRACT
The notion of community involvement has been conceived and operationalised throughout time and across different contexts of restorative justice. The idea of community involvement has been manipulated by youth offender panels. Youth offending team (YOT) workers and community panel members see community as a place, they often mean the whole YOT area, and youth offender panels, therefore, tend to operate at the YOT area level. One important difference between the magistrate's court and youth offender panels: or indeed, between the traditional criminal/youth justice structure and restorative justice processes, is that within youth offender panels the concept of diversity can be more easily transformed or adapted. On the ground, community panel members only participate in a very small part of the referral order process, panel meetings and do not have true ownership of youth offender panels. The involvement of volunteers in the process of youth offender panels is the professionalisation of community panel members.
