Restorative justice practices fall somewhere on a continuum of ‘restorativeness’. This ill-defined ‘continuum’ is often referred to but I’ve not found anything that clearly illustrates visually what practices might look like at different points along that continuum. Below, I have used Zehr’s (2009) three principles of Engagement, Accountability, and Restoration to create a continuum with indicators to help identify where a practice may fall. Since there are three principles, a practice may be fully restorative in terms of one principle, partially restorative in another, and have a bit of work to do in the third area.
Hi – we are currently working towards changing the ethos of our Youth Offending Service to being a restorative one. This chart is really useful in highlighting where we are and where we need to change. Particularly as many of our workers view themselves as restorative because they ‘do’ restorative conferencing etc.