Building a Restorative City

In this article, we will discuss the policy context when building a restorative city, based on our experiences of developing such an initiative at the local level, namely in the city of Leuven, Belgium. This article will contextualise the emergence of the idea of a restorative city within broader societal developments as well as challenges in the local policy environment while presenting the objectives, structure and activities of Leuven Restorative City as a network organisation.

In past decades, crime and social insecurity have become a key concern for local authorities in many countries. Neo-liberal Western societies have faced a decline in social cohesion and a growing distrust of the public towards politicians and policymakers. Both individual citizens and social groups increasingly identified with a victim’s status or a position of not being heard. Political parties and governments became aware of this growing gap between institutions and citizens, which resulted in the support and the launch of a diversity of new programmes at the local municipal level. However, many of these programmes adopted a strong administrative and routine character without being able to grasp local realities. During the subsequent decades, the political world went on proclaiming a discourse on ‘narrowing the gap with the public’, ‘rebuilding trust in institutions’ and ‘fighting against feelings of impunity’. Later, more emphasis was put on approaches which had a participatory nature, where citizens were supposed to actively contribute to the solution of local problems. This demand for citizen participation and “responsabilisation”, the growing recognition of victims’ needs, and the criminal justice system’s incapacity to address crime effectively, contributed to the breakthrough of the restorative justice movement by the late 1990s. By focussing on the relationships between people, this movement seeks to address crime more effectively by moving beyond conventional punitive approaches and giving all involved parties an active role in restoring the harm caused by offences.

In countries where restorative justice is successful, it is characterised by a bottom-up approach and gradual implementation of programmes, starting from the local level. Local cooperation between judicial authorities and community organisations and broader partnerships have proven to be crucial. When these conditions are met, official policies and legislation have a greater chance to be accepted by the key actors in the field and to become effective in the long run. 

It is important to note that restorative justice cannot be reduced to just practical tools, measures or methods, such as victim-offender mediation or conferencing. Well-established methods are important in practice, but they should be underpinned by well-defined values and principles. Restorative justice indeed – at least in Western industrialised countries - reflects first a new way of looking at crime and injustice, resulting in another, innovative way of responding to harmful events and behaviour. A new mindset is required not only amongst judicial actors and professional partners active in the criminal or juvenile justice fields but also in society at large. If people and institutions do not adopt this new legal ‘culture’, or are not open to it, it will remain hard to inform and to motivate conflict parties to participate in mediation and other programmes. After all, support for this approach is essential both at the community level, when individual people are invited to engage in restorative processes, and at the broader societal level, where policymakers seek to implement legislative or other actions in favor of restorative justice.

This broad societal and effective political support for restorative justice is still lacking in many countries, even in cases where national legislation has already been adopted. This lack of societal support is without any doubt one of the main reasons why restorative justice in most countries is under-used: the number of cases dealt with by restorative justice programmes remains marginal in comparison with the number of cases that, according to the law, could benefit from a restorative justice process. This remarkable finding is even more paradoxical when taking into account the positive research findings related to victim-offender mediation, conferencing and circles, particularly in terms of client satisfaction, effects on re-offending and cost-effectiveness. 

During the last decade(s), restorative justice has also been trying to enlarge its field of application. Not only conventional types of offences are being processed through restorative justice, but also various types of injustices that occur in society, such as discrimination or hate crimes. Many of these harmful behaviours cannot be dealt with by the justice system alone, but need to be approached in their natural environment where the problems arise – in society. This is one of the strengths of restorative justice, namely that it is able to activate social resources and to capacitate and support people to take up their responsibilities. Mobilising social capital allows citizens to fully play their role as citizen in a democratic society, thus, also to contribute in a consensual and peaceful way to the solution of ‘difficult issues’. 

Leuven Restorative City started in 2015 with a preparatory year of study and reflection on how support for restorative justice in society could be increased, both in theory and practice. This study explored existing and new ideas relating to civil society, civil society organisations and networks, but also new concepts including ‘deep democracy’ and ‘democratic professionalism’. Existing policy frameworks in Belgium, related to, amongst others, education, socio-cultural action, community building and social work, were looked at in order to find entry points for new ways of ‘doing justice’ in society. We were aware that our search for innovative approaches resonated with upcoming ideas and initiatives at the local governmental level with respect to citizens’ participation and democratic decision-making.    

This participatory approach was and is very much present at the city policy level in Leuven, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants in the centre of Belgium. For the Leuven Restorative City project, it was paramount to embed the initiative in the framework of local policies and to obtain (financial and other) support from the city authorities. Therefore, we were happy to see Leuven Restorative City explicitly mentioned in the 5-years policy plan (2020-2025) of the city council, where reference was made to the overall “objective to make Leuven a liveable and safe city with pleasant neighbourhoods and interweaving functions”. The project was part of the action plan to “participate in regional and (inter)national prevention and implementation partnerships”.

A multi-agency approach has been at the core of Leuven Restorative City from the very beginning. When in 2021 the group decided to formalise Leuven Restorative City as a legally registered non-profit organisation, there was an important concern for a too strong ‘institutionalisation’ of the initiative. Therefore, the option was made to create a network organisation, which is a flexible partnership, without heavy structure, with representatives from multiple sectors, working towards a common goal, and held together by a common framework. Leuven Restorative City is a learning network where the participation of organisations and citizens is facilitated and where added value is found in innovative forms of co-creation. The network stands for a horizontal type of cooperation striving for an optimal balance between flexibility and fluidity on the one hand, and continuity and sustainable development on the other. Members of the network are mainly (public and private) organisations, but also individual citizens. To become a member, they subscribe to a ‘charter’ where they endorse restorative values and commit themselves to live up to these values in their professional, personal and social life.

The general objective of the collaborative network is to promote dialogue and restorative-oriented ways of dealing with, and preventing, conflicts, tensions and polarisation in various contexts, at an interpersonal level, within organisations and at a larger societal level. Hereto, the network supports the development of participatory and restorative attitudes and skills which enable (groups of) citizens within their daily life to transform conflicts into opportunities for personal and social growth.

To facilitate and safeguard the obtention of this objective, the steering committee defines each year the major strategic development lines of Leuven Restorative City. This steering committee consists of network members (individual citizens and representatives of organisations) who are active in different sectors ranging from a.o., the educational, socio-cultural, judicial, and public sector (e.g., youth care, police services, mediation services, and schools). In this way it aims to reflect the composition of the Leuven Restorative City network and Leuven’s society at large. Based on the challenges identified by or communicated to members of the steering committee, they establish working groups - collaborations between network members - to address specific challenges in a structured way. 

Challenges addressed by these working groups can range from tackling bullying in schools, offering training to community guards on conflict management in public spaces, and addressing gaps in scientific research on restorative practices, to facilitating dialogue between citizens on polarised topics. The latter is, for example, exemplified by the working group on ‘democratic dialogue tables’, which organises evenings where citizens are invited to engage in conversations on sensitive societal topics (such as international conflicts, national elections, justice, one’s sense of belonging, etc.) with people holding differing views. The goal of these dialogue tables is not to convince each other or to find solutions, but to better understand each other’s perspectives. Each table is facilitated by a moderator (a volunteer from the working group) who creates the necessary safety and structure to enable a respectful and nuanced conversation where (opposing) perspectives can be exchanged. With members of the working group coming from diverse professional backgrounds, we aim to incorporate their complementary perspectives and expertise into the design of these dialogue tables. Through this process, we seek to identify the most effective methodologies and develop policy recommendations for facilitating such dialogues more broadly across different contexts.

The collaboration within these working groups and the execution of their activities is facilitated by the support of the network coordinator (the only paid staff member of Leuven Restorative City), who serves as the central point of contact within the network. This network coordinator is, in turn, supported by the management group, a small group of committed network members, in making decisions regarding the implementation of the strategic lines defined by the steering committee, including the functioning of the working groups. In addition to supporting these working groups, the network coordinator also supports volunteers who are involved in Leuven Restorative City in other ways than being part of a working group, for example, by helping with (online) communication, broadening the network, or organising events. 

Such events include, for example, ‘LRC cafés’, thematic interactive discussion evenings with an introduction by experts. In this way, we aim to bring together people from different organisations to exchange ideas on current restorative justice-related topics, inspire each other, and foster the development of new initiatives and collaborations. These LRC cafés provide a platform for, for example, international scholars to present their work on creating restorative communities abroad, after which the relevance of their work for the Leuven context can be discussed. They also offer an opportunity to share new restorative tools developed abroad with the people of Leuven, or to present findings from studies about the local needs of educational staff in Leuven regarding restorative practices in schools. Other examples of events include film screenings followed by panel discussions, network events, intervision or supervision sessions, interactive informational campaigns about restorative justice via QR codes in public spaces etc.

This diagram illustrates the interrelationships between the different organs of Leuven Restorative City. 

Website: www.leuvenrestorativecity.be

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Ivo Aertsen is Emeritus Professor of Criminology at KU Leuven, Belgium, where he led the Research Line on Restorative Justice and Victimology. A founding chair of the European Forum for Restorative Justice from 2000-2004, he also coordinated a series of European research projects and currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of The International Journal of Restorative Justice.

Sarah Devriendt is the Network Coordinator of Leuven Restorative City. She has a background in social, health and intercultural psychology and holds master’s degrees from Maastricht University and Université Libre de Bruxelles.

Published on the 18th of December 2024.