Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women committed by adult men is one victimisation in which restorative justice is prohibited in Spain. Considering the emerging criticism against this prohibition, this contribution aims to think about safety and risk as part of a dynamic continuum where the notion of emancipation from interpersonal and institutional abuse of power emerges. After presenting a case study of the use of the art of flamenco dancing by a woman victim of IPV, some conclusions are drawn through a hybrid thematic analysis of data compiled from ethnographic observation and an in-depth interview with this woman and her flamenco maestra or teacher, also a woman. Dancing with a cane serves as a metaphor for the self-reflection and the social support needed to allow the beats for new emancipatory meanings to primary and secondary victimisation. In that complex process, some women might gain security to hold a conversation with themselves, but also to establish an indirect dialogue with the responsible man and the society where both victims and offenders belong. By doing so, the general prohibition for restorative justice is questioned.

Literacy and language challenges amongst offending populations are well-documented and yet restorative justice processes rely heavily on oral and literacy competencies. Through a qualitative practice-based study, the co-creative making and gifting of a handmade thing as part of a restorative justice process is found to enable the formation of a ‘physical’ and ‘non-offending language’ within the person responsible (offender). In this way, a handmade thing is viewed as a ‘conversation starter’, and as helping to form connections, so-called solidarities, across the space between participants in restorative justice encounters. Through phenomenological and thematic analyses of the data, co-creative making and gifting are shown to be innately about the formation of solidarities between people. It is proposed that they contribute towards a language of convergence in which non-verbal components are primary, with verbal elements emerging secondarily. This language draws on the author’s own definition of solidarity in restorative justice research and practice as a place of convergence, meaning to bend or turn towards the other.

This qualitative art-informed case study explored a restorative conferencing media arts programme’s use of digital storytelling practices with justice-involved youth. Specifically, the author was interested in the role of producing a digital story and its accompanying artefacts’ ability to provide a concrete and reflective platform to engage participants in the restorative conferencing process. Data analysis revealed that participants’ use of photography, video and musical overlays in their digital stories promoted awareness and reflection of the restorative justice concepts. For justice-involved youth, the environment provided opportunities to understand and explore the construction and detypification of criminal identities to enable participants to develop personal and social responsibility. This study highlights how digital storytelling practices lend themselves to the need for restorative conferencing interventions to focus on participants’ accounts of the process by documenting participants’ journeys through the programme and examining the artefacts created.

The dominant justice system used in the United States can be mapped by the spaces in which it occurs – e.g. police stations, courthouses and prisons. Restorative justice calls for a new justice architecture that communicates the values of and goals for meaningful accountability, harm repair and the transformation of individuals, relationships and community. Designing restorative justice spaces and infrastructure is best done with the active engagement of those who have caused harm, those who have been harmed and their communities. Non-hierarchical collaborations between these parties and architects and designers ensures that the resulting space is physically safe, beautiful and structurally sound while also meeting individual and community needs. This design engagement may increase the likelihood that community members will access restorative justice practices and may also open their imaginations for expanding restorative justice into daily and community life. Through reflection on real world design projects and participatory design strategies used by the authors, this article explores the potential benefits of participatory design for the creation of spaces appropriate for a variety of restorative justice work, as well as argues that these design engagement processes have the potential to shift individual mindsets and transform communities in meaningful ways.

This study explores how communities pass on traumatic memories to future generations in the aftermath of tragic disasters. In the aftermath of conflict, people attempt to forget or record and share memories of the tragedy to rebuild the community. In restorative justice, hearing victims’ voices is important. This core idea can be extended to future generations by including them in the passing on of the voices. To understand inheritance of memory as a form of restorative justice, I conducted a case study on Minamata disease, a major human, social, and environmental tragedy in Japan. I focused on the work of a local reading group that does not directly advocate for the voices of victims but expresses them by artistically presenting texts related to Minamata disease. The victims perceived that not only humans but also non-human beings had been harmed by environmental destruction. The focus of the analysis was on how the world described by the victims’ sensitivity to non-human beings is passed on to the future generations. The study highlighted that the process of an artistic approach of restorative justice creates a space for dialogue between different generations. The positive impact of an artistic approach to restorative justice can be used as a tool of resistance by communities facing tragedy.