The Advisory Board for the Restorative Justice All-Party Parliamentary Group has recently agreed upon four exciting new work streams and terms of reference for 2022. All four of these work streams focuses on the key Inquiry recommendations that were raised in Inquiry report conducted last year.
The first work stream focuses on “Raising practitioner standards within the criminal justice sector” this is in line with the first recommendation of the Inquiry Report “Registration of commissioned services”. The outcome the APPG aims to deliver from this is to create an investigation report complete with recommendations to set out the rationale for implementing mandatory standards and training for practitioners within the criminal justice sector.
Our second and largest work stream focuses on “Opening up universal access to restorative justice in the criminal justice sector” this crucial area incorporates three of our recommendations from the Inquiry report. Firstly, the standardisation of information sharing, secondly a the need to conduct a review into ring fencing funding for RJ, and finally the move to end blanket bans. The objective from this work stream will be the creation of a members briefing paper outlining the benefits of each of these recommendations as well as providing their rationale.
The third work stream moves away from restorative principals within the criminal justice system, and broadens the scope by “Implementing restorative practices in education, health and social care”. This ties in with the recommendation to further investigate the wider use of restorative practices across multiple sectors, and the key outcome here is to create an investigation report for implementing restorative practices in education, health and social care settings.
Finally work stream four seeks to improve the “evidence base for recording and evaluation”, this reflects the recommendation from the Inquiry report which aimed to improve “quality through effective monitoring and evaluation”. This work stream has two outcomes, firstly to produce a report on a potential mechanism for the commissioning, collection, and dissemination of evidence-based research; and to also create a members briefing paper outlining the benefits of implementing a national reporting framework.
