Leuven: creating support and skills for handling conflicts in a restorative way

Abstract

Restorative justice research and practices have been flourishing in Leuven since the late 1980s, thanks to a long-standing relationship between the KU Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC) and the field of practice and policymaking. More‐ over, in Belgium the scope of application of restorative justice practices is broad: victim-offender mediation (and conferencing) is offered at all stages of the crimi‐ nal justice process for all types of crime and all degrees of seriousness. Neverthe‐ less there is a strong belief that the potential of restorative justice and restorative practices in society is much larger than what has been reached until now (Dünkel, Grzywa-Holten & Horsfield, 2015; Lhuillier, 2007). To realise this potential we first need to build support, awareness, appropriate attitudes and specific skills amongst professional stakeholders including judicial authorities, but also amongst citizens and civil society organisations at large (Pali & Pelikan, 2010). With the financial support of a private foundation a preparatory study ‘Field glasses’ was carried out in a partnership between the NGO Moderator1 and LINC in 2016 (Deboeck, Lauwaert, Vanfraechem, Aertsen & Marchal, 2017). A policy scan was presented of school teaching, individual social work, community devel‐ opment, socio-cultural education and of the field of criminal justice. The scan explored possible links to developing a community-oriented approach of restora‐ tive justice. Furthermore theoretical foundations were discussed, including frameworks related to prevention (prevention pyramid), ‘social vulnerability’ and ‘emancipatory youth work’, ‘new authority’, ‘non-violent communication’, ‘pres‐ ence theory’, ‘deep democracy’ and ‘democratic professionalism’. After this preparatory phase, the next step was to effectively go to ‘the field’ by bringing together a number of organisations in a project called ‘Leuven Restor‐ ative City’, to explore their expertise and needs (first year, 2018), and to set up and try out innovative practices (second year, 2019).