A Day in the Life of a Restorative Justice Practitioner

Posted on: 7th, October 2024

The day-to-day life of a Restorative Justice Practitioner can be incredibly varied, but to give a feel for the role we recently caught up with Linda Millington, who shares what a typical day in her job looks like. 

A typical day for a Restorative Justice Practitioner in Kent and Medway 

What’s a typical day in my job like? My role focuses on bringing victims and offenders into communication with each other when a crime has happened. That could be through a face-to-face meeting, letter exchanges or me passing questions and answers between the parties. The cases I work on cover all manner of crimes including assaults, burglaries, criminal damage, homicide, sexual violence and domestic abuse committed by both adults and young people. 

One day I could be meeting a victim in their home to talk with them about what they want from restorative justice and the next I could be visiting an offender in prison to ask if they are interested in taking part. Very often I'm doing visits with a colleague, one of us leading the conversation and the other taking the all-important case notes. It’s also great to get a second opinion from a co-facilitator and we have plenty of opportunities to talk to our manager for case supervision.

Whilst we have our standard ways of working, each restorative case is different, so I tailor how I work to meet the needs of the people involved. This could be the simplest of things from how often a victim wants to be updated on their case and where they feel comfortable in meeting me to where participants want to sit in a face-to-face meeting.

I don’t think I could do my job without the support of partners. I regularly speak to police officers, carry out joint visits with the Probation Service’s Victim Liaison Officers or speak to offender managers. Our service attends the weekly Kent Police Youth Justice Team meetings where decisions are made on the out of court disposal a young person will receive. Here we hear first-hand about the work other professionals are doing with young people and their families which informs our case work.

I've always said that this can be the most worthwhile job – there’s nothing like hearing how a restorative meeting has changed people’s lives – but it can also be the most frustrating! There are last-minute cancelled appointments, problems finding a suitable venue for a restorative meeting or chasing around to find the right person to speak to. Those are the days that I really value working with other members of the team for tea and sympathy.

That’s when I remember the feedback from both victims and offenders that restorative justice has made a difference to their lives. This is what one participant had to say about a case I worked on:

'I would like to thank [the facilitators] again, they have gone above and beyond to help me with the RJ process and have made my experience pleasant and beneficial and I hope the next person gets the same benefit out of the process as I have.'

If this sounds like something you would like to do to help your community, we have a number of opportunities for volunteers. Your role could include:

• Telling victims about restorative justice and offering them the opportunity to take part.
• Delivering mediation between neighbours who are in conflict.
• Supporting our facilitators to carry out restorative communications between victims and offenders.

Please contact us if you would like more information on the opportunities to be involved in this increasingly growing area of work.