When Children Hurt Children: Restorative Justice and Child Victims

How much of a say should child victims have when they’re dragged into the criminal justice system? An Israeli researcher argues that there’s a significant gap between the involvement in decision-making that child victims expect and the level of attention professionals are willing to give them.

In a study recently published in the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts’ Family Court Review Journal, Tali Gal, lecturer at Israel’s University of Haifa School of Criminology, imagines a restorative justice system that prioritizes children, instead of or in addition to punitive justice.

The problem? A serious lack of existing scholarship on the experiences of child victims in criminal justice systems and best practices for incorporating restorative justice programs with children in mind.

In 2020, the World Health Organization estimated one billion children between 2 and 17 years old experienced violence, abuse or neglect in the last year—nearly half of all children.

The rate of child victimization globally should make designing systems that support them a priority, but there’s little research to help policymakers that centers the experience of children, writes Gal, who is the author of “Child Victims and Restorative Justice: A Needs-Rights Model.”

In her report, originally written in 2020, Gal, argues that justice programs which solely focus on the diversion or rehabilitation of juvenile offenders fail to center the typical victims of those young offenders: other children.

“The promise of RJ [Restorative Justice] to place victims at the center of the discussion and enable them a safe, empowering dialog with their perpetrator is often not fulfilled when the victim is a child,” Gal said.

“Without special attention to the individual needs of a young victim, there may be a serious gap between the theory of RJ and its practice.”

Gal argues for a new framework of child-inclusive restorative justice programs specifically built around child victims and crimes committed against children.

She notes that existing research into how victimized children view their involvement and experiences in criminal justice processes is scarce, in part due to researcher worries about re-victimizing children.

“Despite the difficulties in conducting research with victimized children about their perceptions of justice and their expectations from the justice system, current knowledge suggests that more child-inclusive practices are urgently needed,” Gal wrote.

Ultimately, Gal recommends a set of 16 structural standards for the creation of systemic child-inclusive restorative justice: preparation, participation, providing choices, adaptability, safety, assigning child liaisons, involving supporters, maintaining proportional outcomes, respecting emotional discourse, shared narratives, acknowledgment of wrongdoing and validation, apology and forgiveness, regulation, high-quality facilitators, use of experts, and evaluation.

A breakdown of each standard can be read in section five, “Setting Standards for Child-Inclusive Restorative Justice,” in the report.

Tali Gal is a lecturer and researcher at University of Haifa’s School of Criminology. She is the author of Child Victims and Restorative Justice: A Needs-Rights Model and a former legal adviser to the Israel National Council for the Child.

The full report can be accessed here.

Audrey Nielsen is a contributing writer for The Crime Report.