On 8-9 August, Dr. Ian Marder was invited to Estonia to support the Ministry of Justice in designing a national restorative justice action plan. On August 8th, he facilitated a day of workshops in Tallinn involving police, probation and prison officers, prosecutors, government officials, academics, trainers and administrators. The attendees learned about how restorative justice services are organised in other countries and explored how they might co-operate to develop restorative justice in Estonia.
The following day, he travelled to Jõhvi in the East of the country to facilitate a workshop in Viru Prison. This brought together prison officers, social workers and government officials to discuss how restorative justice can be used in prisons and with serious crime, as well as to reflect on the implications of recent research on prison social climates.
Estonia and Ireland are among ten jurisdictions participating in Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change, a project which Dr. Marder is coordinating, alongside colleagues from Restorative Justice Nederland and the European Forum for Restorative Justice. The project has three aims:
• to contribute towards refocusing European criminal justice systems, agencies, policies and practices around restorative principles and processes;
• to share successful strategies used in different countries to develop law, regulation, policy, practice and public awareness around restorative justice; and
• to determine how the Council of Europe Recommendation CM/Rec(2018)8 concerning restorative justice in criminal matters, adopted in October 2018, could be used as a vehicle to support this work.
Ireland will hold its next national symposium on restorative justice at the University of Limerick on Friday November 22nd, 2019. Registrations for this event will open soon. To find out more about how you can be kept up-to-date with the project, please email Dr. Marder on ian.marder@mu.ie.