This is a blog by Why Me Communications and Campaigns Manager, Keeva Baxter, published: Wednesday, January 8th, 2025

Happy New Year! Here at Why me? we are excited for the year ahead, a fresh opportunity for lobbying the Government, campaigning for wider access and promoting Restorative Justice to new audiences. In this blog, we explore some of the things we are looking forward to in the year to come.

Policy and campaigning

For our policy and campaigning, we will primarily be focusing on lobbying the new Government to strengthen access to Restorative Justice. We will continue to engage with key political figures including the Minister for Victims, Alex Davies-Jones, and the Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation, Lord Timpson. With their support, we hope to see a new approach to the justice system that prioritises healing, rehabilitation and the reduction of further harm.

At the moment, all victims of crime have the right to information about Restorative Justice under the Victims Code of Practice, but, in reality, this is not happening. Therefore it is crucial that we increase compliance with the Victims Code, introducing a level of accountability that will ensure that victims of crime can realise the rights that they are entitled to.

Why me? run a Policy Network of individuals involved in the restorative sector who have an interest in policy and campaigning work. This allows us to collaborate and put forward united calls for action to promote change. If you are interested in joining this group, let us know.

We also continue to be on the Advisory Board of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Restorative Justice. We are part of the criminal justice workstream who are working hard to increase access to Restorative Justice in the criminal justice sector.

The European Forum for Restorative Justice are currently exploring the possibility of Restorative Justice becoming a human right, working with the international RJ community to assess what this would look like. We look forward to working with the EFRJ and their members to delve into this area of work.

Spreading the word

We all know that one of the biggest barriers to Restorative Justice is the fact that people don’t know about it, and we are looking forward to working hard to change this in 2025 by reaching new audiences and helping to address misunderstandings about the restorative process. To do this, we will be sharing the stories of more people who have been through Restorative Justice, amplifying their voices to express how it has impacted their lives.

We are excited to share Series 2 of our Restorative Talks podcast, which is coming very soon. This series focuses on the stories of three people who went through the restorative process after being victims of serious crimes. The episodes will explore the impact the crime had on their life, and how meeting the people that caused this harm allowed them to find a new sense of healing. Watch this space and make sure you are signed up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about the new release!

Our Damage and Repair project will continue to gather the stories of people involved in Restorative Justice between 2002-2022, capturing the power and impact of the process through recorded interviews. These testimonials will then be archived in the British Library and released for the general public and the prison population in a variety of formats later this year. We have conducted 8 interviews so far and look forward to immortalising these stories of transformation in the British Library archive.

Breaking down barriers

As part of our Interfaith Restorative Justice project, we will be publishing a report and putting on an event about how faith groups responded restoratively to the violence and unrest that took place in summer 2024. Over the course of the next year we also hope to have trained community facilitators in Glasgow and Solihull, allowing them to take on cases and help to build interfaith relations.

Dr Belinda Hopkins, who is supporting our work in alternative education provision, will be delivering more training in schools to help staff to build a whole-school restorative culture.

We will continue to promote access to Restorative Justice for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, publishing an information pack on this topic and working with support services to build understanding of RJ and referral pathways.

Overall, 2025 brings a wealth of opportunities for collaboration, growth and change, and we can’t wait to see how it progresses. If you see opportunities for us to collaborate on projects that will increase access to Restorative Justice or are interested in joining our corporate partnership programme, please contact our CEO, Sara Dowling, to explore further. We would love to hear from you about what you have got coming up too – please get in touch via info@why-me.org if there is anything you’d like included in our upcoming newsletters! We look forward to a productive and impactful year, working with you to help more people affected by crime to access Restorative Justice.