Restorative justice in prisons: Methods, approaches and effectiveness

The focus of this report is on efforts to use restorative justice within prisons

Reshaping the field: building restorative capital

Restorative justice is best known as an alternative approach for dealing with crime and wrongdoing. Yet as the restorative movement has grown it is increasingly being deployed in different arenas. Based on a two-year study funded by the UK National Lottery, this article provides an early glimpse into how people experience the introduction of restorativeness as cultural change within an organisational context. Using a combination of observation, in-depth interviews and focus groups, this research explores how different staff groups react to, adapt to and resist the introduction of a new ethos and language within their organisation. Drawing on the ideas of Bourdieu (1986), it appears that a new form of restorative cultural capital is emerging that threatens the very integrity of the values restorative justice claims to uphold

Restorative justice for victims: inherent limits?

Campaigners for restorative justice suggest that we should deal with criminal behaviour by encouraging those responsible to repair the harm they have caused and that those who cause and suffer harm should be at the centre of deliberation and decision making. This paper explores ‘internal’ obstacles to achieving this goal: structural weaknesses in the case for restorative justice. The focus is on contradictions in the way the campaign for restorative justice has thought about the role of victims in restorative encounters. Involvement of victims is crucial for two quite different reasons: they have an essential role to play in the reform of offenders and they need to be involved to benefit from the healing effects of restorative encounters. Tensions between these two ways of thinking about the rationale for victim involvement have been insufficiently acknowledged. This hampers the campaign for restorative justice from achieving its loftier ambitions

A changing climate for business : business planning for the impacts of climate change

The weather already significantly affects economic activity. As the climate changes, all sectors of UK business will be faced with preparing for a range of new threats and opportunities. This report presents guidance for business and business support organisations, based on UKCIP’s experience of working with business. Section 1 provides key messages and suggestions for initial actions. The rest of the report provides more information about future climate and techniques for understanding and assessing likely threats and opportunities

Morale among general practitioners:qualitative study exploring relations between partnership arrangements, personal style, and workload

OBJECTIVES: To explore general practitioners' experiences of wellbeing and distress at work, to identify their perceptions of the causes of and solutions to distress, and to draw out implications for improving morale in general practice. DESIGN: Three stage qualitative study consisting of one to one unstructured interviews, one to one guided interviews, and focus groups. SETTING: Fife, Lothian, and the Borders, South East Scotland. PARTICIPANTS: 63 general practitioner principals. RESULTS: Morale of general practitioners was explained by the complex interrelations between factors. Three key factors were identified: workload, personal style, and practice arrangements. Workload was commonly identified as a cause of low morale, but partnership arrangements were also a key mediating variable between increasing workload and external changes in general practice on the one hand and individual responses to these changes on the other. Integrated interventions at personal, partnership, and practice levels were seen to make considerable contributions to improving morale. Effective partnerships helped individuals to manage workload, but increasing workload was also seen to take away time and opportunities for practices to manage change and to build supportive and effective working environments. CONCLUSIONS: Solutions to the problem of low morale need integrated initiatives at individual, partnership, practice, and policy levels. Improving partnership arrangements is a key intervention, and rigorous action research is needed to evaluate different approaches

The changing shape of general practice in Scotland: the rise of the ‘megapractice’

Objectives: To describe the trends in the nature of general practices in Scotland between 2014/15 and 2023. Study design: Descriptive ecological study. Methods: We obtained data from Public Health Scotland and used general practitioner (GP) practice codes, practice names, and the General Medical Council (GMC) numbers of their listed GPs to describe trends in practice characteristics and to identify individual practices that were likely to be operating as a single entity. Results: Defining practice entities is difficult because different GP practice codes are often retained when GPs are performing across multiple practices. If GP practice codes alone are used, the median practice list size increased from 5094 to 5881, and the mean from 5588 to 6289, between 2013/14 and 2020/21. There was one outlier practice that grew to have over 45,000 patients registered by 2020/21. However, this underestimates the extent of this new mega-practice phenomenon. Using the GMC numbers of GPs listed as performers to identify where the same GPs are working across multiple GP practice codes, we identified a series of mega-practices that span across health board areas and which have experienced a dramatic increase in their list size (with the two largest having list sizes of over 101,000 and 77,000 patients, respectively). Conclusions: Further research is needed to better understand: how mega-practices provide services and whether this differs from other practices; where financial rewards accumulate within mega-practices; differences in staffing between mega-practices and other models; and the impacts mega-practices have on the quality and continuity of care and on health and inequality outcomes

Using imaging to combat a pandemic:rationale for developing the UK National COVID-19 Chest Imaging Database

No abstract available

Punitive restoration and restorative justice.

Criminal justice policy faces the twin challenges of improving our crime reduction efforts while increasing public confidence. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that at least some measures popular with the public are counterproductive to greater crime reduction. How to achieve greater crime reduction without sacrificing public confidence? While restorative justice approaches offer a promising alternative to traditional sentencing with the potential to achieve these goals, they suffer from several serious obstacles, not least their relatively limited applicability, flexibility, and public support. Punitive restoration is a new and distinctive idea about restorative justice modeled on an important principle of stakeholding, which states that those who have a stake in penal outcomes should have a say about them. Punitive restoration is restorative insofar as it aims to achieve the restoration of rights infringed or threatened by criminal offences. Punitive restoration is punitive insofar as the available options for this agreement are more punitive than found in most restorative justice approaches, such as the option of some form of hard treatment. Punitive restoration sheds new light on how we may meet the twin challenges of improving our efforts to reduce reoffending without sacrificing public confidence, demonstrating how restorative practices can be embedded deeper within the criminal justice system