The mission of the Centre is to develop and promote restorative justice around the world.

The vision of the Centre is that one day restorative justice will be the normal way of responding to crime throughout the world.

 

 

 

Centre Notes

 

Continuing Support for Restorative Justice by the United Nations

The United Nations continues to promote its basic principles on the use of restorative justice programmes, which it adopted in 2002. You may recall that PFI played a major role in the development and eventual adoption of these guidelines. Now, the criminal justice reform office of the UNODC (UN Office of Drugs and Crime) plans to publish a handbook for countries preparing to use restorative justice programmes in their criminal justice systems. This will be a practical guide for starting programmes and for linking them effectively to police, prosecutors, judges or prisons.

The UNODC held an expert meeting in Vienna at the end of January 2006 to review an initial draft of the handbook. Dan Van Ness, who participated in this meeting, reports that the handbook should be of practical value to PF national ministries as well as their governments.