Restorative justice standards for family violence and sexual offending

The Ministry of Justice has published standards for restorative justice in family violence and sexual offending cases. The standards include two new principles of practice and details of the service design, specifications and processes required. Restorative justice standards for family violence cases (2013) and Restorative justice standards for sexual offending cases (2013) are available from the Ministry of Justice website (scroll down).

The standards were developed as there was no specific guidance on how to safely manage family violence or sexual offending referrals in the Ministry's 2004 guidelines, Restorative justice in New Zealand: Best practice. 

Research commissioned by the Ministry of Justice can be found on their website, including Review of the use of restorative justice in family violence cases in the Rotorua district (2007) and Review of the Delivery of Restorative Justice in Family Violence Cases by Providers (2008).

The use of restorative justice in family violence remains controversial. For more information, see for example Restorative Justice and domestic abuse: suggested further reading (2009), compiled by Shine. Ruth Busch's 2002 article Domestic Violence and Restorative Justice Initiatives: Who Pays if We Get it Wrong? is available in full text through the Restorative Justice Aotearoa website (scroll down).

A New Zealand book, A Restorative Approach to Family Violence: Changing Tack (ISBN 978-1-4724-1230-0) is currently in the process of publication.

On 2 Septemner 2013, Justice Minister Judith Collins announced that restorative justice services would be expanded and rolled out to all courts around New Zealand.

Image: 'A little justice' by Orange Sparrow. Licence Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)