The Delivery of Restorative Justice in Youth Offending Teams in England and Wales: Examining Disparities and Highlighting Best Practice

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is generally well written.  I have suggested some amendments:

- The first sentence of the introduction is quite a bold statement that requires supporting citations/some unpacking for the general reader - clarifying the 'populist' phrase.

- The conclusion is perhaps too certain in its statement, based on the strength of evidence in this study (even though you do present secondary literature that agrees to some extent with your findings).  With such a limited sample size compared to the approximately 40+ force areas in England and Wales that have YOT functions, perhaps tempering the conclusions would be prudent so that you aren't suggesting that the findings of this study are generalisable for the whole of England and Wales.

- I feel that the sentence in the conclusion,

"Further work needs to be done to improve victim engagement in RJ in youth justice and a ‘concentrated effort toward change’ is required to ‘realise the potential of RJ’"

could do with clarifying.

 From your evidence in this article, it seems that victim's aren't given a chance to engage in YOT RJ work in many cases for a variety of reasons not connected to the willingness of victims.  I wonder if a generalist reader may interpret this sentence as indicating something else  - that victim's aren't engaging with RJ - rather than what I presume you are intending to say, which is that more work needs to be done to ensure that YOTs better engage with victims, which is a slightly different meaning.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing the manuscript and providing your feedback. 

I have addressed the issues and suggestions made, as follows:

The first sentence of the introduction has been supported by citations and the 'populist' phrase has been unpacked.

- The conclusion has been tempered and softer language incorporated to address the issue of generalizability. 

The conclusion has been amended to address the sentence:

"Further work needs to be done to improve victim engagement in RJ in youth justice and a ‘concentrated effort toward change’ is required to ‘realise the potential of RJ’" and the suggestions that the conclusion needed to clarify that the issue is that YOTs need to better engage with victims. The section now reads:

Victims of youth crime continue to be systematically excluded. Further work needs to be done to improve victim contact and engagement in RJ in youth justice and a ‘concentrated effort toward [an organisational cultural] change’ is required to ‘realise the potential of RJ’ (Hoyle and Rosenblatt, 2016: 45, 46). A whole system approach with national and local systematic guidance is essential to embedding RJ ‘fully’ into YOT practice and to ensuring that YOTs better engage with victims, and give, all victims (of youth crime) the opportunity to participate in RJ.

Additional references have also been included (Bottoms, 1995; Brathay, 2017).

Reviewer 2 Report

I thought your reviews of policy and legislation and of low victim participation in RJ were sound and useful. your sections on benefits were concise and could have been expanded a little. These sections did not include critical views and so seemed over positive or idealistic. Methodology was appropriate for the study though the sample was quite small. Later in the text I would have welcomed some statistics rather than general judgements, e.g. "very high", "very low", "lots of conferences". Your argument would have been stronger if you had included an attrition rate of total cases, number referred for RJ, number where there as some sort of RJ process with the victim, and number of face to face meetings. 

Your analysis adds to our knowledge and is very useful - organisational culture, methods of invitation, offender focus, staff shortages, mandatory versus voluntary ROPs, time constraints are all very significant for theory and practice. I would have liked to have read your thoughts on the underlying causes for always making victims the lowest priority. It seems to me that, even with the "champion" practitioner who did engage with victims, revealing attitudes leaked out showing the treatment of victims as 'objects' of practice rather than agents in their own lives - "break down barriers" "selling". 

I would suggest that it takes just as much time if not more to engage young people who have offended as their victims. The difference is that the use of authority is often substituted for skills and compassion with perpetrators while practitioners have no authority over the lives of victims.

Author Response

Firstly, thank you for reviewing the manuscript and providing suggestions and comments.

The revised manuscript has incorporated all your suggestions as follows:

where possible, specific statistics have been included e.g. YOT 4 conducted 'lots of conferences' - n=33 has been added and 80% of victims would take part in face to face.

Unfortunately specific data was not gathered to enable attrition rates to be calculated. The qualitative interviews conducted with 7 YOTS were part of a larger empirical study.

I have included an additional quote from YOT 4 that illustrates how the YOT worker, despite their enthusiasm for RJ, still had to 'cherry pick' and adopt a victim selection process due to time constraints.

Additional references have also been included (Bottoms, 1995; Brathay, 2017) and all references have been checked.