Front-Line Facilitators: A Study into the Conceptualisation and Implementation of Restorative Justice by Ground-Level Police Officers

Abstract

Despite a great deal of academic debate surrounding the term ‘restorative justice’, it would appear fair to suggest that the majority of the research in this area focuses upon the three main stakeholders involved within the process, namely the victim, the offender and the community, victim-offender mediation, and the benefits of such an approach. Nonetheless, not only can this can be seen to neglect a number of restorative justice processes, but also to underestimate the role of the facilitator. Considering how restorative justice has been increasingly embraced by criminal justice agencies in the past 30 years, this study sets out to examine how the ground-level conceptualisation and delivery of restorative justice by the Police Service relates to academic perspectives, policing policies and wider penological shifts. In turn, it will be argued, evidenced by analysis of research data derived from eight semi-structured interviews with operational front-line policing staff, that although the conceptualisation and delivery of restorative justice is influenced by all of these factors, primarily they channel into policing policies and individual discretion, which have the most direct effect on practice.