Restorative justice, restorative approaches and schools

Restorative Justice (RJ) has been described as ‘a global social movement’ (Robinson and Shapland 2008: 337) and provides a powerful alternative paradigm to punitiveness for addressing wrongdoing and harmful behaviour in a range of contexts. However, there are many who believe that the ‘justice’ aspect of the approach is not transferable (or should not be transferred) outside the criminal justice system. The reference to ‘justice’ in the term RJ is frequently changed in work with children where it is common to refer to Restorative Approaches [RAs] (Hayden and Gough, 2010) or Restorative Practices (Sherman and Strang, 2007) – to avoid the taint of the criminalisation process. In the rest of this article, therefore, RAs will be used as the preferred term in relation to work with schools.