Working Group on Restorative Justice & Imprisonment

Imprisonment is not solely a legal or physical confinement but a complex human condition that extends beyond prison walls. The Working Group understands “imprisonment” as encompassing both formal detention and the broader psychosocial effects experienced during and after custody. Within this context, restorative justice offers opportunities to address harm, promote accountability, support reintegration, and restore relationships—recognising the individual not just as an offender, but as a person embedded within a community.

The Working Group on Restorative Justice and Imprisonment seeks to explore and promote restorative approaches across all phases and forms of imprisonment. Rather than focusing solely on restorative justice practices within prison settings, its mission is to understand imprisonment as a temporary, but deeply impactful, condition—one that continues to shape lives even beyond release.

This Working Group aims to create space for reflection, exchange, and action that puts the human being at the center of justice processes. Its approach embraces a holistic view of all those affected: people in custody, victims, families, staff, and wider communities. It advocates for a restorative lens that recognises the importance of relationships, accountability, and healing, both inside and outside the prison system.

Through collaborative engagement with practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and people with lived experience, the Working Group seeks to strengthen the integration of restorative justice in closed institutions. It aims to address structural, cultural, and social challenges, and build bridges between imprisonment and rehabilitation, recognising that true restoration begins within but must continue outside. Its mission is grounded in values of human dignity, social connectedness, and co-responsibility in justice.

Over the past four decades, restorative justice has developed within prison settings across much of Europe. When introduced into closed institutions, restorative justice must be understood not only as a set of practices but also as a process shaped by the prison’s structural, cultural, and relational dynamics. Prisons are not neutral spaces — they influence how harm, accountability, and healing are experienced by all involved.

Restorative justice emphasises the repair of harm through inclusive processes that engage victims, offenders, and communities. In the context of imprisonment, this means recognising both the potential for healing and the barriers created by institutional power dynamics, isolation, and systemic violence.

The European penal landscape has significantly evolved. Traditional large prisons have been complemented by diverse forms of closed institutions: small-scale detention facilities, halfway and transition houses, institutions with electronic monitoring, and forensic psychiatric units. This shift calls for a broader understanding of what “imprisonment” entails — including how confinement can impact individuals' identities, relationships, and prospects for reintegration.

At the same time, the prison population has changed in both size and composition. Though numbers have fluctuated — 483,600 prisoners in the EU in 2022, down from a peak in 2012 — there are growing challenges: overcrowding, increasing numbers of short-term sentences, limited access to conditional release, and the rise of complex social issues such as radicalisation and online criminality. Nearly 27% of inmates are foreign nationals, adding layers of linguistic and cultural complexity to restorative efforts.

These realities demand that restorative justice approaches remain flexible, context-sensitive, and grounded in a holistic understanding of harm. To be effective, restorative work in closed settings must address the multiple layers of impact — personal, relational, institutional, and societal — that define modern imprisonment.

• Joelle Marcelle Antson
• Daniela Arieti 
• Emanuela Biffi
• Carla Ciavarella 
• Bart Claes
• Elvis Dibanins 
• Idıl Elveris 
• Daniela Hirt 
• Rocío Nicolás López
• Roberto Moreno 
• Tiina Pakkonen 
• Claudia Christen-Schneider
• Leanne Trapedo Sims
• Secretariat Representative: Emanuela Biffi, EFRJ Programme Coordinator

The current mandate of the Working Group on Restorative Justice and Imprisonment is to deepen understanding and expand the practical application of restorative justice in relation to all forms and stages of imprisonment. Our objectives include:

• Exploring Cultural and Institutional Dynamics: Investigate what defines a restorative prison or closed institution. Identify cultural, subcultural, and systemic elements that can foster or hinder restorative approaches within such settings.
• Promoting Social and Moral Rehabilitation: Examine how restorative justice can contribute to desistance and the reintegration process. Support the development of practices that strengthen personal responsibility and community bonds.
• Fostering Victim Awareness: Develop strategies to create victim awareness among incarcerated individuals and staff, and ensure restorative pathways remain sensitive and accessible to victims, especially when involving prison contexts.
• Restoring Social Networks: Recognise and strengthen the role of family, children, and community ties in the restorative and rehabilitative journey of prisoners. Address the needs of the social network as indirect victims and essential agents in re-entry processes.
• Addressing Phenomena in Closed Institutions: Analyse how issues such as violence, radicalisation, and institutional power dynamics influence the possibility and quality of restorative practices. Propose pathways to manage and transform these dynamics restoratively.

Through these objectives, the Working Group intends to produce practical tools, theoretical insights, and policy recommendations that reinforce restorative justice as an essential part of penal transformation. In particular, this Working Group will develop context-specific restorative justice models, tailoring practices  to various types of detention facilities (e.g., small-scaled detention houses, psychiatric institutions, transition houses, half-way houses) and emerging trends in incarceration (e.g., overcrowding, increased diversity, short sentences)