The International RESTORATIVE JUSTICE WEEK (#RJWeek) will take place all over Europe and beyond in the week between 18-25 November 2018. Please use this document to inform us about your initiative and give it more visibility! If you wish to receive the EFRJ film and postcards for your event, fill in the form on the bottom of this page. Deadline: 9 November.
Check the EFRJ CALENDARto search for events close to you!
More events will be published closer to the date.
EFRJ INITIATIVES
The EFRJ will launch a new film “Expanding the restorative imagination” based on interviews taken during its 10th international conference in Tirana (8 minutes). The film will be subtitled in several languages by EFRJ members who volunteered for this task and uploaded on the EFRJ Vimeo channel: the link will be public on the first day of the RJ Week, but if you wish to see it before to screen it during your event please fill in the form below.
The EFRJ will also launch the European Restorative Justice Policy Network. The event will bring together representatives of the ministries working in RJ, penal mediation and/or criminal justice legislation from all European member states (Brussels, 19 November). The aim is to share experiences, reforms, best practices and challenges in member states; to make European policy makers aware of new research outcomes, innovative practices and international policy matters regarding RJ; to learn about needs and how the EFRJ could further develop (policy) development; and to provide a forum for discussion.
The EFRJ will also launch a new series of postcards, based on the artworks of Lee Anderson, an artist from the UK who joined us in Tirana for drawing some of the workshop sessions. You can request the printed postcards to disseminate them during your event, or to organise special activities to write and send them. For example, during the RJ Week 2013 postcards were used by prisoners to write to their families, or by regular people on the streets invited to write a message to the person they had a conflict with. Please fill in the form below to receive the printed postcards.
AND YOU, WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?
Please contact Emanuela Biffi if you need advise for organising your RJ event and for disseminating your activity within our network! If you already have an idea, please use this document (deadline: 9 November) to publish your event in the calendar of events on the EFRJ website.
BE INSPIRED!!!
Just to have an idea of what happened across Europe in the past years… During the #RJWeek 2017, the EFRJ launched the film “A Conversation” which was screened in about 70 places across the globe, published the booklet “Restorative Imagination: Artistic Pathways. Ideas and experiences at the intersection between art and restorative justice” and inspired many members to organise their local event. During the #RJWeek 2016, the EFRJ organised a series of events around the main theme ‘Arts, Justice and Storytelling’ and collected and disseminated stories and events in the field of RJ. During the #RJWeek 2015, the EFRJ celebrated its 15th anniversary with a series of events in Leuven and disseminated the events organised by its members. During the #RJWeek 2014, the EFRJ produced the video ‘Restorative justice. Inspiring the future of a just society for all‘ which was screened across Europe as part of the campaign ‘RJ Lunch on Inspiring Innovation’. During the #RJWeek 2013, the EFRJ designed postcards which were sent across Europe in digital and printed versions.
BRIEF HISTORY
It all started in 1975 in England, where prison chaplains launched a day to remember incarcerated people, the ‘Prisoner’s Sunday’. The idea was then spread in other countries and 20 years later it become the ‘Prisoner’s Week’. This is still celebrated and in Belgium the national prison week and our international RJ week are celebrated with a good collaboration between the EFRJ and local organisers working in prison settings: for example, in 2017 their theme is about family members of prisoners, something where RJ can have a proper say. Finally, it was only in 1996 that Canada expanded the prisoner’s week into the ‘Restorative Justice Week: Community, Victims, and Prisoners’, shortened to ‘Restorative Justice Week’. The EFRJ joined this international campaign since few years after its creation in 2000.
