Restorative Justice Values and Standards Committee

The mission of the Committee

The aim of the Restorative Justice Values & Standards Committee is to determine quality and ethical standards for practice in the field of restorative justice. As the European Forum for Restorative Justice (EFRJ) becomes more proactive in promoting public and government support for restorative justice in general and, more specifically, positive initiatives such as the EU Victims Directive 2012, which calls for good quality and safe restorative justice services, it is critically important that we can clearly define what we mean by restorative justice  and which values support best practice in an increasing range of contexts. This Committee contributes to recognise the needs of our restorative justice community to identify the values and minimum standards for providing quality restorative justice services in Europe, collect information on the efficiency and effectiveness of restorative justice , and finally create practice guidelines and self-assessment tools for restorative justice  organisations.

The  team of the  Committee is composed by 10 participants, including 1 Board member, 1 Staff member and 8 EFRJ members. If needed, the Committee may invite experts outside the EFRJ membership for further consultation. In the following two years, the Committee will continue to work on creating European quality standards for RJ services.

• In 2019, it will produce practice guidelines based on the manual (published in 2018)
• In 2020, it will create a self-assessment tool, which is a sort of checklist that organisations may use to evaluate their practices and services.

This Committee needs to consider how RJ standards and values can possibly be monitored and how implementation can be urged, taking into account the new Council of Europe Recommendation as well as the European Directive 2012/29/EU (Victims’ Directive). This Committee will also cooperate with the Training Committee for the creation of training offers to further develop professional competences and of a European register of RJ trainers and consultants within our membership.

In general this Committee:

• comes together to 1 day face-to-face meeting each year;
• commits to regular virtual meetings (Skype) and exchange of emails;
• can be consulted on this topic by EFRJ staff and members.

The members of the Committee are selected based on their experience, profession, motivation to participate, and country representation. Committee members contribute to the work of the EFRJ voluntarily.

Members (2019-2021)

• Carmen Borg (Malta)
• Antonio Buonatesta (Belgium)
• Claudia Christen-Schneider (Switzerland)
• Olga Kiseleva (Russia)
• Arti Mohan (India)
• Ana Pereira (Belgium)
• Valeria Tramonte (Italy)
• Diana Ziedina (Latvia)

More info

Please contact the Secretariat, or Secretariat representative: Edit Törzs, EFRJ Director, or Board representative: Lars Otto Justad

The RJ Values & Standards Committee is born out of a Working Group: originally, this initiative was planned to last 2 years, but finally the Board agreed this is a crucial topic for our field and transformed the temporary Working Group into a long-lasting Committee. The Working Group was chaired by Tim Chapman and composed by:

1. Belinda Hopkins, director, trainer and consultant of Transforming Conflict (UK)
2. Gian Luigi Lepri, psychologist and coordinator of the restorative city project at Sassari University (Italy)
3. Virginia Domingo de la Fuente, professor and restorative justice practitioner at the Scientific Society of Restorative Justice (Spain)
4. Diana Ziedina, head of the mediation division of the State Probation Service (Latvia)
5. Monique Anderson, PhD researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium)
6. Claudia Christen-Schneider, Justice Program Manager & RJ Advocate Prison Fellowship Switzerland & Swiss RJ Forum (Switzerland)
7. Patrizia Patrizi, representative of the EFRJ Board
8. Edit Törzs, representative of the EFRJ Secretariat

The timeline of this Working Group, until the establishment of the Committee:

• March 2017: call for participants to the Working Group
• June 2017: first meeting in Berlin (before the AGM)
• November 2017: second meeting in Leuven
• December 2017: experts’ workshop in Leuven
• end 2017: publications of the paper on efficiency and effectiveness of restorative justice (the main author of this paper is Martine Rietman)
• June 2018: workshop on Values & Standards for restorative justice in Tirana
• November 2018: publication of the EFRJ Values and Standards manual (eds. Tim Chapman and Edit Torzs)
• December 2018: the Board formally decided to transform this Working Group into a standing Committee
• July 2019: a new call for participants has been launched
• September 2019: the new Committee was established
• November 2019: first meeting in Leuven