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Home > Arhiva > 2012 > Numar: 3 > Restorative Justice and Its Operation Though the Referral Order An Analysis of Its Effects on Young Offenders

 Restorative Justice and Its Operation Though the Referral Order An Analysis of Its Effects on Young Offenders

    by:
  • Dana Maria Antonie (Alumni, London Metropolitan University, phone: 0742.291.561, E-mail: danamaria_antonie@yahoo.com)

The youth justice reform introduced by New Labour in 1998 in the United Kingdom made restorative justice the central approach in responding to youth crime and the referral order the main instrument of putting the restorative justice initiatives into practice. However, the referral order has been criticised for not being grounded entirel estorative justice values, but these values have been suppressed by the wider y on r ideological perspectives adopted in youth justice. This research is concerned with exploring the young offenders’ experiences of the referral order to analyse whether the effects of this order are consistent with the effects that restorative justice is claimed to have on offenders. The study took place in a Youth Offending Team in West London, and a qualitative research approach was chosen using participant observation and interviewing to collect the data.

Keywords: restorative justice practices, United Kingdom, youth offending, criminological qualitative research