Organizing restorative justice practices around crimes involving extremist violence remains a difficult task. It is not self-evident to bring perpetrators with very specific and radical ideas into contact with their victims. Nevertheless, interesting initiatives have been made in a number of European countries. In Spain, Italy and Northern Ireland, among others, initiatives were taken in response to the extremist violence that these countries experienced at the end of the 20th century. These initiatives have a very specific context and praxis, initiated ad hoc with attention to the specific needs of those involved. In no case can they be considered standard models or generalized practices. This contribution describes some of these initiatives in Spain, Italy and Northern Ireland and reflects on the potential uses of these dialogues in general.

This contribution advocates a fresh look at counteracting radicalization. Two frameworks are used for this. In the first place, that is the restorative justice that we have coined here as ‘making amends’. We need this normative framework because it provides clues for the prevention of ‘transgressing’ forms of radicalization, which can lead to extremism and terrorism. Secondly, we use an Activism of Hope framework, which states that we may and must resist social deprivation and injustice. After all, deprivation and injustice are the breeding ground for radicalization.

This contribution seeks to bring together three themes in a descriptive and exploratory manner: (a) community service orders, (b) traffic offences and (c) restorative justice; the Dutch situation is central. To this end, the Dutch legal regulation regarding community service orders is first explained. Attention is also paid to existing empirical research on the effectiveness of community service orders in terms of reduction of recidivism (section 2). Furthermore, the sanctioning of traffic offences is discussed as well as the consequences for this of the current bill that seeks to sharpen criminal liability for serious traffic offences (section 3). Subsequently, it is examined which restorative justice provisions or modalities are available and how restorative community service orders are and can be designed (section 4). Finally, I describe my ideal when it comes to the sanctioning of traffic offences in the form of a continuum in which a special role is reserved for restorative community service orders (section 5). The contribution ends with a conclusion (section 6).

In this article the development of a restorative justice probation practice is discussed from the perspective of the restorative justice principle of the inclusive community and the contribution of probation volunteers to the reintegration of (ex-)offenders through specific restorative justice intervention strategies. It is shown that in penal policy of the past decades the penal welfare-model and the aim of reintegration of ex-offenders has been overshadowed by a more utilitarian, punitive and management logic of criminal justice. As a result, the reintegration and social inclusion of ex-offenders has become a rather neglected area and, in the current liberal-democratic state, offenders face social conditions in which it is very hard to turn their life around. In addition it is suggested that both in mainstream and in restorative justice interventions, achievement of the goal of reintegration is often problematic or absent. Moreover, this lack of opportunities for connection may undermine and reduce the effects of interventions, including those with a restorative justice approach. Probation services that use specific restorative justice intervention strategies guided by both professionals and probation volunteers might contribute to a more active, inclusive role of the community and society in the reintegration of ex-offenders.

In this paper we compare the experiences of victims of serious violent crimes with a restorative intervention completed before or after a judicial decision was taken. Specifically, we ask: What is the impact of the availability of a judicial decision on the victims’ assessment of the restorative intervention? We conducted interviews with victims of violence in Belgium and Canada. The findings show that these victims are satisfied with a restorative intervention, irrespective of the phase in which this intervention takes place, provided that the intervention is complemented with a judicial procedure in which the offender is held responsible for his actions.

Hip-hop and restorative justice may seem odd bedfellows, but according to Antony Pemberton they have more in common than many would assume. In the first place hip-hop shares a common history, at least with restorative justice's modern incarnations, spanning four decades, to become a similarly global phenomenon. Much of the social ecology shaping RJ is similar to hiphop. In addition hiphop's criticism of criminal justice almost goes without saying. Almost no source offers similar scathing critique of criminal justice and penal institutions as rap lyrics. Pemberton concludes that rituals in hip-hop are connected with the need to deal with conflict. The way respect and disrespect can coincide in rap-battles might offer insights in the way similar dialectics can be navigated within restorative justice processes. The extent to which this is possible is necessarily limited. Pemberton finds that hip-hop – with the exception of graffiti- does not seem currently to criticize the key neo-liberal values of the American Zeitgeist. The much maligned chasm between the old-school and the new school can be situated in this observation. Where hip-hop, as a social movement, used to deploy the depiction of injustice as a means to underline the necessity of social change, the current motto appears to be rich or die tryin”. The life of the thug and the gangsta is depicted as the epitome of the American Dream. Here Pemberton sees grounds for a cautionary warning for restorative justice, which is nurtured by a similar neo-liberal undercurrent in a number of jurisdictions.