Is Restorative Justice an Effective Approach in Responding to Children and Young People Who Sexually Harm?

In the UK, Australia, and further afield, restorative programmes have been developed as a response to the failure of the criminal justice system to give victims of sexual violence a voice in the legal process. The restorative justice literature has tended to focus on sexual offences perpetrated by adults and the importance of being victim centred. When it is a child or young person (CYP) who sexually harms, it poses a unique set of challenges for law and society and the restorative practitioner. This article explores the reasons why a different approach may be warranted given the perceived failure of conventional criminal justice in addressing the growing problem of child and adolescent harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) in Scotland. It discusses the difficulties with balancing the rights of the victim with the CYP who perpetrates the HSB and considers the challenges encountered by practitioners in the implementation and application of restorative programmes in HSB cases involving CYP. Although the evidence supports a growing need for a different approach, and restorative justice may offer just that, problems with net widening, the referral process, and resistance from other professionals and victim advocacy groups present real barriers. Consequently, restorative practitioners are likely to find practising in this area more challenging due to a lack of support and cooperation.

A Review of the Working Dynamics of the Salem-Keizer/Cascade Student Threat Assessment and Willamette Valley Adult Threat Advisory Team Models

This chapter outlines the step-by-step procedures for collaborative threat assessment in K–12 schools and communities. Focusing on the Salem-Keizer/Cascade model for student threat assessment and the Willamette Valley Adult Threat Advisory Team model for adult threat assessment, this chapter lists the sequential instructions and protocol for investigating and assessing threatening situations involving both youths and adults. The chapter also provides guidelines for conducting threat assessment through a collaborative process that involves both youth-serving and community-serving public agencies, such as K–12 education, higher education, law enforcement, public mental health services, youth and adult parole and probation, the courts, victim advocacy, and the district attorney’s office. While this chapter does not provide data, the model is currently being reviewed by three research projects that examine referral and intervention outcomes, including impacts on underserved and at-risk populations, overidentification of students of color, and the effectiveness of preventing the school-to-prison pipeline and expulsion. One of those projects has initially found that the model supports all students with inclusion and decreases the chances of arrest and expulsion. Finally, the chapter provides links to examples of assessment protocols with assessment questions.

Improving Justice for American Indian and Rural Victims of Crime Through Community-Engaged Research

Community-engaged research can be effective in directly improving justice for individuals and communities, and to guide policies and practices. Given the challenges to accessing some populations of interest, such as with rural victims of crime, community-engaged approaches provide a means to support ethical and culturally competent research that can improve justice in a meaningful way. In this article, we discuss a collaborative research partnership between academic researchers and a victim service agency that sought to connect rural victim advocacy with a data-driven research methodology for improved justice delivery in two communities with differing rural dynamics. Researchers and practitioners can benefit from recognizing the unique, yet varied, victimization experiences within rural communities, and an understanding of this variability among rural victims and contexts can inform justice practice. We provide best practice recommendations from both researcher and practitioner perspectives for the successful implementation of a project that serves victims in the community and through policy. Implications for justice-related policy and practice for rural and American Indian crime victims are discussed.

Risk Management in Stalking Victims: A Multi-Agency Approach to Victim Advocacy

A pilot Multi-Agency Stalking Intervention Programme (MASIP), introduced in three police forces in England, provided among a range of interventions, the delivery of safety planning advice, and needs-based support for stalking victims through a bespoke advocacy service. The ultimate aim of MASIP was to equip victims with tools to manage the variety of harms caused by stalking, as well as enable them to access the criminal justice system with adequate support. This study explores the personal needs of stalking victims from the perspectives of stalking victims, advocates and stakeholders involved in the intervention program, as part of a larger evaluation study conducted by the authors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a total of 10 stalking victims who participated in the MASIP, three advocates who directly interacted with the victims, and 19 MASIP stakeholders involved in the project. Findings revealed that overall, victims believed the advocacy service aided their ability to cope with the realities of stalking. Having a victim advocate as single point of contact made victims’ journey through the justice system easier to navigate, provided them with the emotional support that they required to deal with the harms of stalking and the practical advice offered regarding their personal safety, and allowed them to feel in control of their own risk management. Advocates reported that the multi-agency context helped in risk assessment and ability to design and deliver bespoke support plans, which uniquely improved victims’ engagement with the service. Due to the small size and possibly biased sample, our conclusions must be interpreted with caution.

A Review of the Effects of the Violence Against Women Act on Law Enforcement

One of the goals of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was to improve law enforcement responses to sexual and domestic violence by providing funding to expand prevention, enhance investigations, and increase victim services. Since VAWA’s enactment, police responses to these crimes have evolved, including officer responses to victims and offenders, and various agency operations. This article highlights some noteworthy changes in law enforcement related to facilitating victim reporting, enhancing victim advocacy and services, crime reduction and investigative tools, supplementing personnel and training, and encouraging multiagency collaborations as a result of VAWA.

The community-level impact of a family justice center: indicators from the Guilford County Family Justice Center

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the ongoing data and evaluation strategies being used to document the impact of the Guilford County Family Justice Center, which has been in operation for nearly four years. Design/methodology/approach There are four primary ongoing data and evaluation strategies used to tell the story of the impact of the family justice center (FJC) on the community: tracking services provided by the FJC, collecting annual data from partner agencies, conducting week-long censuses and doing an annual survey of professionals affiliated with the FJC and its partner organizations. (The current paper reports on the first three of these strategies.) Findings Methodological limitations of the evaluation strategies used warrant caution in interpreting the findings of the ongoing evaluation of the Guilford County FJC. However, preliminary evaluation findings indicate support for the center’s positive impact on the community it serves, including in the number of clients served, a reduction in domestic violence-related homicide rates and the creation of new community resources that emerged through the FJC partnership. Research limitations/implications Each of the evaluation strategies used in this study holds inherent strengths and limitations, which are discussed in the paper. Beyond the future evaluation of local FJCs, a range of rigorous methodologies can be used to further explore the impact of the FJC model. Qualitative methods may be useful for gaining an in-depth understanding of victims’ and survivors’ perceptions of accessing resources through an FJC, as well as for studying beliefs and attitudes toward FJCs among various community stakeholders. Quantitative methods can be used to apply more complex statistical analyses to comparing indicators of the impact of FJCs over time. Practical implications The data and evaluation findings from the Guilford County FJC add support to the potential positive impact of the FJC model on communities. These preliminary data suggest that FJCs can impact communities by offering support to victims and coordinating resources among partner organizations. Collaborative partnerships can be leveraged to lead to broader community changes that strengthen community-level responses to interpersonal violence through greater community awareness, opportunities for community members to contribute to solutions and the establishment of new resources that emerge from needs identified through the partnership. Social implications Overall, there is a pressing need for research examining various aspects of the FJC model and identifying factors that contribute to its success at fostering collaboration, supporting victims and survivors, holding offenders accountable and preventing future violence. With the rapid growth of the FJC models, the need for research and evaluation to document the effectiveness and limitations of the model is high. Originality/value Designed to serve as a one-stop shop for victims of domestic violence and other forms of violence to seek help, FJCs offer, within a single location, multiple services from a variety of professional disciplines. These services include law enforcement, victim advocacy and prosecution. Although the FJC model is expanding rapidly across the USA and internationally, research to date is limited, and thus, the current paper will add to the research and evaluation basis for the FJC movement.

Withholding homicide victim names: Looking for a win-win solution for families and the police

Although withholding the names of homicide victims from the public is a relatively new police practice, it has proven to be controversial, with the media, legal scholars, and victim advocacy groups often opposing these policies. In order to better understand the issue of withholding names, we examined the prevalence of these practices in Canada’s largest municipal police services. These results were further explored in a series of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from 20 victim services and advocacy organizations. Analysis of the interview and survey results reveal that the key priority of the police is maintaining the integrity of their investigations, and all other issues are secondary. Although the issue of withholding information has become contentious, many of the arguments become moot, as the friends and family members of these victims often post the information related to these deaths on social media, effectively bypassing both the press and the police. Implications for policy development are discussed in light of these findings.