Restorative Justice Over Distance

The EFRJ Board and Secretariat, in collaboration with the local organising team from Sassari University, have decided to postpone the 11th international EFRJ conference to June 2022. The decision takes into consideration the responses received in the survey, launched to have our members' opinion about the organisation of this large-scale event with the existing covid-19 restrictions and uncertainties for 2021.

While looking forward to our international gathering in Sassari in June 2022, the EFRJ proposes an alternative event for bringing us together during the same week, on 21-25 June 2021. Despite the limitations and challenges experienced during the covid-19 pandemic, we aim at celebrating our local and global connections in a virtual symposium.

The symposium “Restorative Justice Over Distance” will provide the virtual space for knowledge sharing and exchange among our growing international community of restorative justice practitioners, researchers, policymakers and activists. The aim is to map what is happening in the field and also to reflect on the future of restorative justice. In times when the words solidarity, responsibility and truth are the motto, we wish to better understand what is the position of restorative justice on key issues that matter to our societies where criminal and social justice go hand in hand.

The symposium will include a series of different sessions, such as interactive dialogues with international critical thinkers and thematic presentations on key issues relevant for the field.

Plenaries

• 1 networking game
• 3 interactive dialogues with 6 international renown speakers from 2 other continents
• 1 world café on RJ & the pandemic

Parallel sessions

• 1 session on practices and 1 on policies
• 4 sessions with topics proposed by participants (accepted abstracts)
• 2 sessions proposed by 4 thematic working groups of the EFRJ
• 1 session on 4 current EFRJ projects

We invited internationally renowned speakers to engage into a critical conversation on the future of restorative justice:

• Dominic Barter (Brazil) & Mara Schiff (USA)
• Thalia Gonzalez (USA) & Johonna Turner (USA)
• Juan Tauri (New Zealand) & William Wood (Australia)

We also invited some of our members to present during the symposium, because of their knowledge and experience about certain key issues that matter in our societies such as: violent extremism, gender-based violence, environmental justice, restorative schools, restorative cities. Other members, instead, will contribute with topics relevant for our restorative justice community, such as practice, training and policy work. For this, we are grateful for the active and committed participation of our members in different committees and working groups.

Finally, we contacted those authors who were ready to present in Sassari 2021 to give them an opportunity to take part in this virtual symposium, to present their work, receive feedback from other participants and continue with their research and/or practice in the field. These include a variety of different topics connected to restorative justice and also the EU-funded projects where the EFRJ is currently a partner (i.e. child victims, LGBT hate crime, victim rights training, and training of trainers).

This mix of frontal presentations, facilitated dialogues and interactive sessions contribute to almost 30 hours online live meetings spread throughout the full week of 21-25 June 2021.

Registrations closed on 21 June (11am CEST). You can contact us for last minute registrations, but it may take up to 48 hours to respond and set up your profile on the virtual platform (as our team will be busy with the actual event!). The videorecordings will be available for 3 months after the event. 

Pay What You Want – form of participatory pricing model: participant are free to chose the price (more info below).

EFRJ members receive an automatic 50% discount for EFRJ members on the fee (simply make sure you renewed or joined the membership in 2021 and login on the website).  If you are an organisational member and different employees wish to join the symposium, or if you have any other administrative and financial question, please contact our Admin & Finance Officer Rik Defrere.

What is this Pay What You Want model?

• The regular fee is the suggested price for this virtual symposium: the fee supports the activities of the EFRJ throughout all the year, as the years 2020-2021 have proven to be financially difficult. If you will attend all the symposium (28 hours), each session costs between 4-8 EUR, depending if you are a EFRJ member or not.
• The reduced fee is for those who consider the regular fee too high (e.g. individuals not supported by an institution). No documentation is requested: we simply trust your choice. You can always contact us, if the reduced fee is too high for you: we will use the “pending coffees” to support your participation. Note that the waiver application procedure closed on 17 May, but we will try our best to accommodate your request after this date too.
• The pending coffee is a symbol for social solidarity. Through this system, a participant pays the price of two reduced fees, although he/she needs only one, with the aim to grant a free entry to anyone in need. To know more about the pending coffee tradition, click here.

The event will take place on Worksup.com. Event attendees can open Worksup on mobile, web or tablet and use full-service functionality in either of them; no downloads needed. Only registered participants will have access to Worksup. One week prior to the event, participants will be able to login on Worksup, edit their profile for networking and get familiar with the platform (including the 1-to-1 video chat and other networking features). Videorecordings and other materials on Worksup will be available up to 3 months after the event. Worksup will direct attendees to Zoom Meetings for the interactive live talks. Zoom Meetings will open in a new window in your browser.