Non-Law Enforcement Restorative Justice and Gender-Based Violence: Results from a County-Wide Pilot Project

Background and Purpose: Restorative justice, including peacemaking circles, family group conferences, and victim-offender dialogue, is a relatively well recognized and studied field of practice. However, the application to gender-based violence has faced strong resistance. In fact, anti-violence proponents have long considered restorative justice to be dangerous to survivors, leading to explicit and implicit policies banning its application to gender-based violence. The history of prohibition is demonstrated in the lack of programming and paucity of evidence regarding its effectiveness. The limited academic literature on restorative justice addressing gender-based violence has remained primarily tied to law enforcement associated with a handful of projects that have informed the field over the past three decades.

This paper fills a critical gap through its study of a unique county-wide non-law enforcement restorative justice pilot project addressing domestic and sexual violence in northern California. The project targets primarily poor, communities of color and prioritizes intergenerational participation. Pilot study results offer insights into how practitioners defined the objectives of a restorative justice initiative, participant experiences, potential risks and benefits to safety, and the perceptions of facilitators and organizational partners. The paper closes with practice and policy implications for the field of gender-based violence in a national context that is opening to this once prohibited violence intervention approach.

Methods: This mixed methods study is based on data collection over a 2.5 year pilot period. The total number of cases were 40, consisting of 94 individuals. Among those participants, 83.5% were people of color; 39.0% were primarily Spanish speaking and 13.4% were deaf/American Sign Language users. The study collected 104 surveys evaluating preparatory meetings from 51 adult participants of the restorative justice project in addition to 14 post-circle surveys and semi-structured interviews of eight adults who had completed circle processes. In addition, the study included surveys from eight facilitators and semi-structured interviews of 20 facilitators or trainees.

Results: Analysis of participant data reveals high measures regarding clarity of goals and process, helpfulness of the process, support of facilitators, and safety. The numbers of participants who completed a circle process was lower than anticipated, numbering four cases involving 26 individuals. Participants who completed circles reported positively on the inclusion of children and the opportunity to share their perceptions and feelings in a structured process. On an organizational level, the results indicate the difficulties in maintaining facilitators given the competing demands of participating organizations and the intense skill and labor demands of restorative justice.

Conclusions and Implications: The pilot project results offer important findings on the possibilities and challenges of restorative justice addressing gender-based violence. Attention to safety concerns yielded promising results regarding the capacity to address safety and the benefits of structured dialogue. Given the longtime resistance to restorative justice in addressing gender-based violence and the emergent nature of the intervention, the study’s focus on implementation also suggests programmatic factors that can hinder and facilitate the ongoing support and development of restorative justice programming in the future.