Restorative justice as a way to approach lgbt hate crimes. Alongside a look on hate crimes regulation and prevention

Restorative justice is still developing as a way to handle offenses, despite of the remarkably good assessments that experts have given about it. This is a qualitative research that aims to investigate how restorative justice would operate in the case of LGBT hate crimes. In such offenses, both victims and offenders have certain characteristics and needs. The investigation tries to assess if these circumstances could be successfully dealt with by using restorative justice, and the opinion of LGBT people both educated and non educated in criminal justice is recognized as well. Other relevant areas that are examined are hate crime regulation in Spain and its application, other than LGBT people‟s opinion on the penalties for such offenses. LGBT hate crime prevention is also discussed, and after recognizing some setbacks or implementation problems that restorative justice might have, some proposals to improve its practice are presented. Also, a new project developed by the European Forum for Restorative Justice with a huge potential to improve its use in such crimes is briefly presented in the research