Did restorative justice fulfil its promise?

Restorative justice (RJ) has some passionate advocates and, as we noted in Chapter One, its time has come in the wider policy context in Britain. Neither of the authors of this volume could be described as ‘evangelical’ or naive (Dignan, 2003, p 135) about the likely transformative impact of RJ in a context such as children's residential care (see also Daly, 2002); rather, we set out to take a careful and evidenced look at how it was implemented across 10 very different children's residential homes. Overall, the findings from our empirical research reinforce Daly's advice that we should expect modest and patchy results from the approach rather than the ‘nirvana story’ that is often communicated (Daly, 2002). We hope our investigation fulfils the need to move to a ‘new’ phase in our understanding of RJ that leaves behind the polar opposites of optimism without empirical evidence and scepticism when the new approach becomes familiar and the impossible dreams of change are not realised (Daly, 2002). A new phase for research into RJ has to be a move away from commentaries that focus on single case studies of extraordinary people who forgive, repent or change and move on from horrific or harmful behaviour.

Our research findings are rather more mixed than those in Littlechild's (2003) research. The manager of the children's home that was the focus of Littlechild's research describes the introduction of RJ in that home in the following way:

There were certainly individual staff members who were equally enthusiastic about RJ in our research. There were also homes that were generally positive about RJ and its uses in the residential childcare setting.