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Victim Offender Mediation: identifying best practice

This paper describes a system to monitor and evaluate the Restorative Justice services in Scotland where

there is a commitment from the Scottish Government to the provision of Restorative Justice in the youth

justice system. These services are now available in the majority of Scottish local government authorities. The

monitoring and evaluation system provides both local and national information and supports the

development of ‘best practice’

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In ‘Restorative Justice; the evidence’ 2007, The Smith Institute argues for a national Restorative Justice

Board in England to provide the focus and leadership to deliver Restorative Justice on a widespread basis. It

is argued that in this would provide ‘an institutional focus for the development of Restorative Justice as

distinct to a programme on the margins’.

In Scotland, Government commitment to Restorative Justice has resulted in the establishment of a National

Coordinator and Trainer, and a researcher. These posts are located with SACRO, a national voluntary

organisation and provide a focus and leadership to the delivery of Restorative Justice as recommended by

The Smith Institute. As a result, Best Practice Guidance for Restorative Practitioners, their Case Supervisors

and Line Managers has been produced. This guidance establishes nationally recognised standards and

definitions of best practice. A national programme of training has been taken forward to support the Best

Practice Guidance and to enable practitioners. to develop the skills required. A national web based

monitoring an evaluation system to support the consistent delivery of services, and to inform and develop

standards and practice has also been established.

Developing practice – continuous improvement

Electronic web based information systems offer new opportunities to deliver quality services. Quantitative

and qualitative data is available immediately, for analysis & for feedback. This provides the opportunity for

local services, national coordinators and researchers:

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To be informed about current local practice

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To use information to deliver practice to established standards

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To improve practice by learning from information collected

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To pilot and evaluate new approaches

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To develop standards and ‘best practice’ from new approaches.

The electronic monitoring and evaluation system has two main components:

1. The Client Form

2. Participant questionnaires delivered using Viewpoint CASI (computer assisted self-interviewing)

The Client Form.

Data recording and collection in Restorative Justice cases is complicated by frequent multiple

interconnections: an offender may have harmed more than one victim in different ways: for example an

offender may have assaulted one person and robbed another and subsequently taken part in different

Restorative Justice processes. Restorative Justice data collection tools are rarely able to capture the

possible variety of interactions between participants, such as what offences were committed by whom and

against whom, and what responses were made, who made them and to whom were they offered.

Electronic data recording allows these difficulties to be overcome and the Client Form uses a unique tree

structure which records data as a case and allows details about multiple Victims and Offenders, the

processes each has been involved in and the outcomes to be recorded.

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It is recognised th at current ly there is n o unbiased selection of cases n or a comparison with approach es oth er t han restorative

approaches when assessin g outcomes. The research material qu oted in this paper is based on a report from Th e Smith Institute 2 007

which used a model drawn from NICE (National Inst itut e for Clinical and Health Excellence) (2006) to examine large b odies of research

evidence for guidance t o medical practitioners. This mod el requires g reat er sp ecif icity in definitions of pop ulations and interventions,

comp arisons with other approaches and unbiased selection . There is the p otential t o meet these criteria with th e syst em in Scotland

when required.