Celebrate with us the 20th anniversary of the EFRJ

The EFRJ was officially established exactly 20 years ago, after a preparatory period of a couple of years where a small group of committed people from different countries explored and discussed the desirability and feasibility of creating a European organisation.
There was a strong belief that we needed a process of re-thinking our understandings of crime and punishment and a strong need to integrate the victim’s perspective in probation and prison work. Already in the late 1960s, in the UK and The Netherlands some experiments included victim-offender groups and innovative programmes of restitution. Later on, under the influence of the victims movement, more attention was drawn to the needs and interests of the victim, fed by a strong concern that victims – through victim-offender mediation and other restorative justice practices – should not be ‘used’ or ‘instrumentalised’ on behalf of the offender. Nowadays, it is generally accepted that restorative justice should adopt an inclusive and impartial or, even better, a ‘multi-partial’ approach, offering recognition and support to both victim and offender, while also facilitating involvement of community members.
Today, the EFRJ brings together a wide range of professionals: practitioners and restorative justice services, policy makers, researchers and criminal justice practitioners from all over Europe and we’re proud to say that the EFRJ is by now the largest European NGO in restorative justice with a membership of about 500!

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