Diana Batchelor her research into restorative the justice process

Diana Batchelor began her career in the criminal justice sector with Thames Valley Partnership in 2006, and has since been working in criminal justice and conflict resolution in the UK, South Africa and Lebanon. Her current research is inspired by her experience as a frontline practitioner in the UK: – facilitating restorative justice conferences, supervising young offender reparation, and supporting young victims and families bereaved by homicide. The current research is for a PhD, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and supervised jointly by the Criminology and Psychology Departments of Oxford University.

I conduct interviews with victims before and after they do (or don’t) participate in a restorative justice process. I will present some of my early findings, telling stories and highlighting themes mentioned by more than one participant. I will put this in the context of previous research, which has demonstrated that victims tend to be satisfied with the restorative justice process. What is lacking, however, is psychological empirical research on how and under what conditions restorative justice produces a range of benefits. Moving beyond measures of “satisfaction”, my research explores how benefits for victims are related to their motivation to take part, and to the structure of the restorative process.