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Restorative justice (RJ) is becoming an important feature within the UK youth justice system.

It aims to ensure that those with problem or offending behaviour or both are confronted about, and made responsible for, their actions. This often involves some form of reparation and apology.

An evaluation¹ of a pilot scheme in a residential unit for young people in Hertfordshire has demonstrated its effectiveness.

In the 10 months following the implementation of RJ, police call outs to the unit fell by a fifth and the number of recorded incidents fell by half. However, incidents of recorded violence increased, although this was almost wholly because of one young person's unprecedented violent behaviour during this period.


Interviews carried out with staff and young people before and after staff training backed the findings of the statistical data. The predominant view from both groups was that RJ had led to a positive change in the culture of how problem behaviour was dealt with.

A big investment in training also seemed to have paid dividends. Staff judged training to have been good at introducing the concepts and approaches for use in formal conferences.

However, some staff believed RJ in residential units is more complex than in other settings. It is perhaps more akin to domestic conflicts, where there are close ties between the people involved, rather than those between offenders and victims where the relationship may be more distant or they may be even unknown to each other. It was clear that if matters were not dealt with soon after the event, which would be the result if there were attempts to set up a formal RJ meeting, the effect of using RJ was diminished.

Therefore informal meetings using RJ arranged quickly after the event were found to be most effective. Also, some young people reacted better to the informal meetings rather than formal ones, which could make perpetrator and victim anxious and make it difficult to engage. Some young people had refused to take part in formal meetings.

Bullying was the most difficult to deal with as it was caught up with the relationships between the residents. There could also be negative repercussions for the victim from the perpetrator if the former had reported the bullying to staff. Creating "closure" for the victim was seen to be difficult in such situations.


The evaluation appears to show that RJ can be put into place successfully within residential establishments. The staff and young people interviewed were generally very positive about it. This would seem to be partly due to the training, partly due to the commitment of the head of the unit, and partly due to the preparedness of the staff to try something new, and persevere with it.

In future, training and ways of implementation may need to focus more on the use of RJ techniques that fit the issues arising within residential units. Outside of such specialist settings, many perpetrators and victims are not sharing their lives in the way that is inevitable in units such as these.

Hertfordshire children, schools and families service is developing a training pack on introducing RJ into children's residential units, and will host a conference on this way of working in the spring.

Brian Littlechild is associate head of department of social, community and health studies, University of Hertfordshire; Tom Rees is assistant director, Hertfordshire Youth Justice Service.

¹ The authors' report, An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Restorative Justice Approach in a Residential Unit for Young People in Hertfordshire, is available from B.Littlechild@herts.ac.uk