Restorative Approaches with Harmed Parties

New Hampshire Restorative Justice Training

In this training participants delve into understanding harm and needs of people impacted by crime; they explore and develop strategies for harmed party engagement in Diversion services. The training includes action planning around communication, supporting harmed parties and their choices, and tracking outcomes related to victim satisfaction with restorative justice.

Training Objectives

  • Relate our experiences to the harm and needs of affected parties and examine what it means to be harm focused in RJ
  • Explore Victim Needs and how they can change over time
  • Examine and consider how our public messaging influences a meaningful invitation to harmed parties
  • Propose Commitments NH Court Diversion can make to to Affected Parties
  • Explore guidelines around initial outreach and communication with harmed parties
  • Propose a timeline for outreach efforts and phone calls
  • Practice outreach intended to promote voice and choice for harmed party engagement
  • Develop a list of strategies to use to manage challenges
  • Plan to collect data around victim satisfaction with Diversion and restorative justice

Selected Participant Generated Training Products

This training began by inviting participants to identify personal feelings and needs during a time that they experienced harm. Below are word clouds of the feelings and needs named by participants in each of the trainings. If a word was named more than once it appears larger.

Training Materials

Training Pre / Post Survey Data Analysis

Jon and Marc Developed and administered pre and post Surveys for the Restorative Approaches with Harmed Parties Training. A pre-training survey was sent to participants two weeks prior to the training start and sent out multiple survey-completion reminders in advance of the session. Post-training surveys were distributed at the conclusion of the training. Trainers also sent participants multiple reminders to complete the post-training evaluations.

The surveys measured participants’ changes in knowledge from pre to post surveys in three domains:

  • The Impact of Crime/Wrongdoing
  • Effective Practices to Engage Harmed Parties
  • Effective Practices to Support Harmed Parties in Meeting their Needs.

The surveys measured participants views of the current effectiveness of their agency’s practices/protocols; and their likely to change practices in the following four areas as a result of the training:

  • Reaching out to harmed parties
  • Providing harmed parties choice from a range of engagement options
  • Supporting harmed parties in meeting their needs
  • Learning from the experiences of harmed parties 

The post training survey also asked participants to identify any other changes they planned to make in harmed party engagement and surveys as a result of the training. 

Completion Rates

Twenty-one people, 100% of participants, completed the Pre-Training Evaluation Survey. Eighteen, 86% of participants, completed the Post-Training Survey.

Evaluation Results

There were significant increases in ‘current knowledge’ in two of the three evaluated domains:

  • The Impact of Crime/Wrongdoing (minor increase in current knowledge)
  • Effective Practices to Engage Harmed Parties (significant increase)
  • Effective Practices to Support Harmed Parties in Meeting their Needs (significant increase)

The were significant decreases in participants’ views of the current effectiveness of their agency’s practices/protocols* in the following four areas as a result of the training:

  • Reaching out to harmed parties
  • Providing harmed parties choice from a range of engagement options
  • Supporting harmed parties in meeting their needs
  • Learning from the experiences of harmed parties 

Participants recognized that their current practices to reach out to and engage harmed parties are actually much more ineffective than they believed prior to the training. Participants indicated in the post-training surveys that they planned to make substantial changes to the above practices across all four areas.

Participants also identified several other planned changes in their approach/outreach to harmed parties in response to an open-ended question.