Consultation Response: Oversight and funding of youth justice services
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) invited a consultation following on from the White paper Cutting Youth Crime. Changing young lives. Restorative Justice for All (RJ4All) International Institute offered our response based on our Policy Brief 3, on Youth Justice Service (YJS) teams’ responses and based on our pilot project with the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF): Restorative justice – the evidence: A pilot for the youth justice system of England & Wales.
The MoJ questionnaire consisted of two parts:
- Oversight and Accountability
- Funding Reform
Firstly, as concerns Oversight and Accountability, RJ4All advocates for restructuring National Standards in youth justice services into thematic areas with cross-cutting principles, emphasising the importance of restorative justice. It supports the introduction of new standards on victims, early intervention, and prevention, whilst integrating disproportionality throughout the standards to promote equal access and power sharing.
Secondly, RJ4All believes that the new funding formula should be implemented sooner rather than later, considering the long transition period in which we demand basic organisation costs to be safeguarded.
Supporting the Youth Justice Board’s (YJB) Child First framework, RJ4All also upholds the inclusion of victims’ and children’s voices, along with addressing disproportional representation of those facing compounded marginalisation at every stage with a focus of young women and girls.
RJ4All’s consultation response supports restructuring youth justice standards around thematic areas with cross-cutting principles, while arguing that restorative justice should be embedded throughout service delivery rather than treated as a standalone addition. It also supports reform of oversight and funding. Repeatedly conditions that support on preserving Child First practice, safeguarding core functions, and ensuring children, victims, and their families’ voices shape both standards and resourcing decisions.
Core Positions
RJ4All favours the restructuring of National Standards based on thematic areas rather than the current structure based on phases of youth justice. Thematic standards with cross-cutting principles better reflect children’s non-linear journeys and complex needs. We argue that restorative justice should cut across all standards, be proactively offered at multiple stages, and support victim-centred delivery. RJ4All supports new standards on early intervention, prevention, and victims. We believe that updated out-of-court resolution practice should incorporate restorative justice and a legal definition aligned with wider rights frameworks. RJ4All upholds that disproportionality should be integrated across all standards, including focused attention to girls and young women and those facing compounded marginalisation.
Oversight and Accountability
RJ4All strongly supports including the voices of children, victims, and families in performance oversight, but maintains that participation is only meaningful when it is accessible, trauma-informed, and sensitive in practice. The current system enforces justice routes whereas we advocate for giving all parties a voice and empowering them through dialogue. RJ4All works towards addressing power abuse. We thus emphasise our support for the inclusion of various voices at all stages of the justice process, highlighting our core value of power-sharing. We also support three-tier performance information in principle, while warning that the proposed “System Health” tier lacks clarity about who would hold responsibility.
Key Recommendations
- Implementing the right to be informed about restorative justice processes at every stage of a victim’s journey, including each diversion point in the justice system i.e. pre-arrest, pre-charge, pre-trial and post-sentence.
- Clarity on funding related information, reporting and “System Health” accountability.
- Funding and oversight for Wales is not clearly encompassed in the MoJ consultation document and would require its own clarification.
- Invest in a centralised case management system (CMS) for restorative justice youth work, including consideration of RJ4All’s dedicated Restorative Justice CMS.
Read our consultation response
Explore our detailed recommendations on oversight, accountability and funding for youth justice services in England & Wales.
Media Contact: Communications Officer | l.nguyen@rj4all.org | Work phone available upon request
Media Assets: High quality photos with captions available upon request
Follow us on social media: Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube Channel
Information for Editors
About Restorative Justice for All International Institute (RJ4All)
RJ4All is a charitable international institute with a mission to address power abuse, conflict, and poverty through the use of restorative justice values and practices. We do this through a combination of restorative justice projects delivered both internationally and locally at the RJ4All Rotherhithe Community Centre in London. We advance community cohesion, equality, human rights, and redistribute power by supporting civil society and delivering social justice and poverty relief projects, educational programmes and high-quality volunteering opportunities for marginalised groups.
For more information: https://rj4all.org/
