Building social support for restorative justice: Media, civil society, and citizens.

Source: (2010) Leuven:European Forum for Restorative Justice.

The Report was prepared within the framework of the project Building Social for Restorative Justice, implemented by the European Forum for Restorative Justice and partner organizations between April 2008 and April 2010, co-financed by the European Commission. The project “Building Social Support for Restorative Justice” has tried to answer three main questions: 1) how can cooperation with the media be set up to inform and educate the public about restorative justice?; 2) how can cooperation be developed with civil society organisations to create broad support for restorative justice?; 3) how can we increase the involvement of citizens in local restorative justice programmes? Throughout the project, the above questions were analysed against a theoretical background, good practices and promising examples were identified and in the end practical recommendations, in the form of a media toolkit, a manual on how to work with civil society and citizens, and a final scientific report were prepared. The report is mainly theoretical, and its main objective is to open up further spaces for debate and thinking along these lines, and to engage more systematically with the questions of public information about, education on and participation in restorative justice. (author’s abstract)