Collaboration practitioners – policy-makers: Possibilities to be explored – limits to be taken into account

Source: (2008) Report of the fifth conference of the European Forum for Restorative Justice, Building restorative justice in Europe: cooperation between the public, policy makers, practitioners and researchers, Verona.

Development of Restorative Justice does not only depend on the quality of the performed practice. The chances of practice to survive and to grow largely also have to do with networking and structural collaboration. The introduction of RJ-methods should not only be supported by a few enthusiastic initiators, but ideally has to be embedded in a global policy. Therefore it is frequently said that “bottom-up”-collaboration of practitioners with policy-makers is close to a “conditio sine qua non” – an absolute requirement – for implementing Restorative Justice. But is this at all feasible? The aim of the workshop was to explore the possibilities, the challenges but also the risks and pitfalls. (excerpt)