Pacing and timing

One of the trickiest aspects of successful restorative justice involves getting the timing right for participants, within the constraints of the criminal justice system's own process from arrest through to conviction and sentence. Having entered the criminal justice system, the conflict is dealt with at the system's pace, which can take anything from a few days for a caution to be delivered to months or even years for a complex trial to progress through to sentence. By the time the person who caused harm has met potentially dozens of professionals and gone through a range of criminal justice hoops, any initial empathy and remorse that existed may have faded.

Trials and sentencing for serious offences involve a long drawn-out process, which can leave everyone frozen in anticipation of the next stage in an endless series of dates, with little chance for moving on or finding closure. Each point on the long journey can open the wound for those harmed, who are forced to continually revisit the original trauma in a way that is not healing. Even if the person responsible does end up in prison, they may appeal against conviction or sentence, and as their sentence progresses, they can eventually request early release. These applications for leniency may be simply a formality for the perpetrator but can be perceived as a lack of remorse or unwillingness to accept responsibility for those harmed. Having finally breathed a sigh of relief when their tormentor was safely locked away, those harmed may find themselves unable to start grieving until the final date – which may not come until the perpetrator's licence (the period of statutory supervision back in the community) is completed – while for some, this too can bring fresh anxieties.

If the harmed party is invited into a restorative process months or years down the line, they may say that they have put the incident behind them, that it is already sorted or that they don't want to reopen old wounds. For some, though, it helps if a period of time is allowed to elapse before a restorative meeting. One woman who had been burgled chose to wait until the young man who burgled her had completed all of the requirements of his community order before agreeing to meet him.