Common Ibero-American Rules on Restorative Juvenile Criminal Justice

The Common Ibero-American Rules on Restorative Juvenile Criminal Justice is an international soft law document adopted jointly by an Ibero-American justice alliance made up of five justice actors and networks. The aims are to establish a set of common guidelines to serve as a guide for the development of public policies on juvenile criminal responsibility in different countries; to enact regulations that strengthen and increase the application of mechanisms that are both substitutes for, and complementary to judicial proceedings; to prioritise the use of alternative measures to ensure that deprivation of liberty is a last resort; and to address the rights and needs of children and adolescents, victims, and the community, with the aim of guaranteeing effective access to justice, using the restorative justice model as a general framework.

The Ibero-American justice networks and actors - comprising the Ibero-American Judicial Summit (CJI), the Inter-American Association of Public Defenders (AIDEF), the Ibero- American Association of Public Prosecutors (AIAMP), the Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries (COMJIB), and the United Nations Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (ILANUD) - have expressed their commitment to promote the development, incorporation, and implementation of restorative juvenile justice in Ibero-American countries through various unilateral instruments:

• The Ibero-American Declaration on Restorative Juvenile Justice, approved at the 19th Plenary Assembly of COMJIB (2015)
• The Ibero-American Decalogue on Restorative Juvenile Justice, approved at the 19th Plenary Assembly of the CJI (2018)
• The Decalogue of Ibero-American Prosecutors on Restorative Juvenile Justice, approved at the XXVI Ordinary General Assembly of the AIAMP (2018)
• The AIDEF Declaration on Restorative Justice in the Juvenile Penal System, approved by the Executive Committee (2021)

On 11 April 2022, the aforementioned institutions agreed to: recognise the value of these declarative instruments; to draft and sign a single document (the Common Rules); to establish a permanent forum for generating common strategies that will encourage other institutions to join in promoting the effective application of the Common Rules and the adaptation of juvenile criminal justice systems to restorative values and principles; as well as for dissemination, training, and awareness-raising on this subject. This permanent forum is the Ibero-American Technical Committee on Restorative Juvenile Justice.

The Ibero-American Technical Committee on Restorative Justice is an unprecedented endeavor of coordination and collaborative leadership, which has been established as a permanent forum for mutual collaboration, bringing together the five representatives of the aforementioned justice networks. The members of the Technical Committee, through their experience and expertise, carry out actions with different purposes, including disseminating, raising awareness and publicising the content of the Common Rules to promote their application in the different countries of the region, and lay the foundations for a future international convention. The committee’s firm intention is to achieve the recognition of restorative justice as an integral part of the juvenile criminal justice system, and to guarantee effective access to justice for children and adolescents, victims, and the community. This permanent forum was established in 2022 and continues to hold regular meetings.

• 15 rules;
• 14 guiding principles;
• 11 cross-cutting approaches that serve to ensure the proper implementation of the Rules;
• Annex where the most commonly used concepts are developed and explained, and the international regulatory framework on the subject is mentioned.

• The restorative approach as part of the speciality of juvenile justice systems, understood as a process of individual accountability for children and adolescents and collective co-responsibility for addressing the needs and harmful consequences of offences committed by children and adolescents, who must participate together with victims, families, significant adults, and the community (Rule 4).
• The use of the restorative approach for all types of offences and crimes, at all stages of the process, through a set of practices such as filing with or without compensation, out-of-court settlements, reparative agreements, dialogue circles and sentencing circles, conciliation, restorative meetings, mediation, referral, full reparation for harm or damage, and suspension of the process on probation;
• The intervention of interdisciplinary teams and the production of interdisciplinary reports is required from the outset of the criminal proceedings, and specialised training is provided for all those who operate in the juvenile justice system.

Silvana Greco and Marianela Otero are members of the Ibero-American Technical Committee on Restorative Justice by Aidef and members of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Programme, Office of the General Public Defender of the Nation