Victims to Partners: A Child–Inclusive Approach in Restorative Justice

The generally positive results of restorative practices from a child–victim’s perspective discussed in Chapter 5 make it an attractive alternative to the criminal justice process. However, Chapter 5 also showed that restorative justice can harm children. Therefore, it would be wrong to include child victims in the ‘routine’ practice of restorative justice. Rather, it might be appropriate to create specific programs for child victims, and perhaps special programs for specific crimes against children (i.e. family and sexual abuse), to enable adequate training, facilitation and investment that will produce safe and successful processes for children of various ages. In crafting such programs, a needs–rights approach can maximize their success and minimize the risks to children. Therefore, the needs–rights model will be used in this chapter to propose some guiding principles for action for child–inclusive restorative justice programs. Accordingly, this chapter translates the ideas and theories that were presented in previous chapters into practical methods within a restorative justice framework. Rights (Chapter 2) and needs (Chapter 3) are connected to principles for action. The Convention’s four guiding principles of Best Interests, Equality, Participation, and the Right to Life, Survival and Development, adjoin the right to be protected from abuse and neglect, and the right to rehabilitation and reintegration — and form a human rights framework for child victims. To convert these human rights into practical principles and produce a holistic model, however, findings from the psycho–social literature regarding the needs of child victims are integrated. Following the model presented in the end of Chapter 3 (see page 78), these two disciplines are connected to create a combined needs–rights model. Related needs are linked with correlated rights to create clusters that indicate the interrelationships between them. The human rights principles provide the normative aspirations and identify areas that should be explored empirically. The psycho–social findings support (or potentially negate) the linked normative arguments, and help translating the general norms into principles for action.