ABSTRACT

This chapter projects into relief the issues that arise when a policy community attempts to develop a set of principles for restorative justice. It draws upon the account of a review in 2002 of the UK Restorative Justice Consortium's (RJC) then current statement of ‘Standards for Restorative Justice’ (Restorative Justice Consortium 1999). This review led to the publication of a Statement of Principles (Restorative Justice Consortium 2002). The exercise reported here was presented at a workshop of the International Conference on Restorative Justice ‘Effective Restorative Justice’ in Leicester that year. Since that time the RJC has undertaken a further review of the Statement of Principles. This has radically emended the 2002 document, and has given rise to the ‘Principles of Restorative Processes’ (Restorative Justice Consortium 2004). In addition, there has been an exercise in Scotland to set up principles for restorative justice in the Children's Hearings system. This chapter concentrates on the 2002 exercise, but makes brief reference to the subsequent revision and to the Scottish development (Scottish Executive 2005).