Project: Restorative Justice

Communication from Maaike 28 March 09:

I'm very much looking forward to working with all of you on our learning journey to South Africa. We 'found' each other in our joined interest in restorative justice. During our meeting last week during the Kessels & Smit day we decided to organise a skype meeting to reflect on the first steps of our journey. In a following mail, I will send an invitation through 'datumprikker.nl' on which you can specify your availability. (Monique, can you fill this in for Robert?). Mark and Andrea: looking forward to hearing more of your experiences in working on these issues in South-Africa!

For now, I have been googling on interesting articles and websites on restorative justice. There are a few I would like to share with you, our South African colleagues may want to add!

www.khulisaservices.co.za - This is the organisation Mark and Andrea (?) are working with in South Africa on restorative justice issues www.restorativejustice.org -This is an excellent website with a huge library on restorative justice. The makers of the website are Prison
Fellowship International (PFI), an organisation that works on restorative justice and reconciliation all around the world. Howard Zehr is a well-know writer on the subject.

If you want to make a 'quick-start' with reading up on this issue, you can read the one-pager on the previous website with an overview of the concept (http://www.restorativejustice.org/intro) or this three-pager article by Gilman (See attached file: What is restorative justice by
Gilman.pdf)
www.rjcity.org -This is a very interesting project by PFI in which a broad network of people is thinking through how a city of 1 million people that responds as restoratively as possible to crimes, victims and offenders would look like. I really like the idea! The interesting thing
about this project is that it moves beyond specific activities or types of programs that are often used in restorative justice practice, but takes an even more systemic approach. As part of the project they made a 'story' of how responding restoratively to crime can look like. It is an
easy-reader that gives immediate insight: (See attached file: Case study from the RJ city 2007.pdf)