Understanding Restorative Justice

In this article Lisa Rowles, Design & Development Lead for the Charity Khulisa, explores the importance of restorative justice in today’s world and acknowledges its’ African roots

Khulisa - Leveraging truth & reconciliation in pursuit of community restoration

In the post-apartheid years, Nelson Mandela established the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, to help the nation heal its’ troubled past and find a way to repair and restore broken relationships; as well as providing reparation to those so terribly wronged during apartheid.

During this period, a small charity – Khulisa (Zulu for ‘nurture’) – was born.

Khulisa’s white South African founder, Lesley Ann Van Selm, was so outraged by the lack of human rights for her fellow black brothers and sisters, she campaigned tirelessly for her South African black brothers and sisters, to give the impoverished and imprisoned a voice. She led a delegation of black African designers to showcase their talents at a fashion event in Paris – unheard of during the 90’s – and ultimately found her passion in helping transform the lives of those plagued by violence and trauma in townships and prisons. Inspired by the TRC, Khulisa became part of the new movement towards the creation of a restorative ethos and national restorative framework in South Africa.

Some 18 years later, Khulisa Social Solutions in South Africa is a highly successful NGO, with a national presence, multiple awards and a reputation for establishing systemic community restoration in some of the most impoverished and violent locations.

From this rich heritage, we established Khulisa in the UK and launched pilots in 2009. Building on the knowledge and experience of our South African colleagues, we tailored and piloted the flagship programme, Silence the Violence in prisons, and schools. It took time for UK British audiences to accept the intense, heart-opening, honest and direct South African approach, encompassing creative experiential (mask-making, drama and narrative) and pro-social modelling techniques.

Forward 6 years, and we’re now well established, with a presence in London and Manchester, successfully helping individuals to transform their thinking and their lives in prisons, schools and communities. Our UK model incorporates a restorative, whole-person and asset-based approach to rehabilitation, resettlement and desistance. Harnessing behaviour both cognitively and physiologically provides an opportunity for neurogenesis and the potential for sustainable learning.

Restorative Justice in the UK

Whilst it’s been around for the past 20 years in the UK, Restorative Justice (RJ) is now a recognised method of diversion from the Criminal Justice System for low-level crime and anti-social behaviour (ASB). It can also offer the victim the opportunity to have a voice and get answers post sentence, where key criteria are met. At it’s heart, RJ offers an alternative non-violent process for dispute resolution, where harmed and harmer can hear each other’s perspectives and gain closure (potentially agreement) for a way forward, beyond the harm done. RJ is a critical part of restorative practice, which embraces a broader, approach that seek to prevent, resolve and repair relationships. Restorative practice provides individuals and organisations with an opportunity for all voices to be heard, promoting self-worth, self-responsibility and social re-integration for those who have caused harm. A key difference between handling a conflict restoratively and through traditional disciplinary methods is the opportunity for re-education about behaviour. Too often, traditional disciplinary approaches assume that sanctions are required as opposed to support in order to enable a change in behaviour and sustainable social re-integration. The potential for belonging and acceptance – so critical to young people – is rarely offered within a traditional disciplinary approach.

Why a restorative prison?

It’s with this context that Khulisa perceive a need for a change in the way that we rehabilitate our offenders. Our prisons are undergoing significant and unprecedented change. Several government agendas (such as Transforming Rehabilitation) have put the prison estate under considerable pressure to reduce cost, restructure and still deliver against increased targets. Add to this the impending smoking ban in prisons and further delays in the electronic tagging system that was due to provide greater alternatives to incarceration, and the picture is increasingly bleak.

However, all of these factors only reinforce the argument for the introduction of a restorative prison culture. With the introduction of EE’s (Enabling Environments) and PIPE’s (Psychologically Informed Planned Environments), the timing has never been better to introduce a restorative approach to specific landings and wings, that can ultimately be replicated across the whole prison. Staff surveyed in a recent PIPE pilot indicated that prisoners appeared to take greater responsibility for their actions and behaviour, were recalled less and demonstrated increased compliance with licence conditions. Restorative skills enable staff to build offender capability -increasing a prisoner’s personal responsibility and developing skills, which improve their wellbeing and outcomes – for example, reduced substance misuse and engagement in education.

Of course, prison staff play a vital role as the prison authority. They are in the strongest position to encourage a shift in offender perspective and have the power to both reinforce an inmates’ mind-set and to radically challenge it. They can be the game changer for rehabilitation. We believe that by developing a restorative relationship between staff and prisoner that values integrity, respect, honesty and fairness, offender accountability and the likelihood of changing lives increase dramatically.

Using a restorative practice model and applying it to the entire prison population - the restorative prison concept – would increase understanding between staff and offenders, enhance wellbeing of offenders and inevitably decrease the prospect of violent incidents. This would create a more stable, safe, secure and rehabilitative culture in prisons, which fosters a greater likelihood of desistance from crime and enables prisoners to behave as contributing members of society.

For staff, the benefits would be tangible through improved relationships and a reduction in violent altercations, adjudications and prisoners self-harming. Moreover it would reduce stress and improve morale, which in turn reduces sickness absence. For prisoners, this inevitably enables calmer conversations on wings and improved prisoner self-awareness and coping skills to proactively engage in interventions.

Restorative approaches have shown significant impact when implemented systemically as opposed to a ‘bolt-on’ intervention outside of the custodial setting. Best practice examples exist in both children’s homes and within the police force. The evidence suggests that this could be an effective low cost model for transforming rehabilitation. Watch this space!

Lisa Rowles, Khulisa

Khulisa is a national charity dedicated to cutting crime and reducing reoffending. Lisa can be contacted at lrowles@khulisa.co.uk