Safeguarding and Empowering Crime Victims: Training manual

This training manual aims to provide assistance to crime victims and practitioners focusing on safeguards and best practice when implementing restorative justice. This training handbook has been designed with the following target groups in mind independently of their location:

1. Victims of crime
2. Criminal justice professionals including probation staff, police, prison staff
3. Justice community professionals and volunteers (e.g. neighbourhood justice panels)
4. Local authorities and public sector bodies with criminal justice responsibilities
5. Youth Justice professionals (Youth Offending teams, etc)
6. Restorative justice providers in the private, public and public sectors including mediation, circles, conferencing and panels
7. Victim support organisations and individuals.

The manual uses the Victims’ Directive (Directive 2012/29/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2012 establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime, and replacing Council Framework Decision 2001/220/JHA) as its legal and theoretical framework for achieving its objectives.

The manual includes information on the rights of the victim, a definition of restorative justice, case studies illustrating safeguarding issues and a victim assessment guide.

The training material are the result of extensive research with victims, offenders and restorative justice practitioners (Gavrielides, 2014). This was carried out in 2013-14 under the direction of Professor Theo Gavrielides.

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Table of contents