7. Restorative Cities as Regulatory Governance

Introduction: the Restorative City

The restorative city has multiple meanings. In the world of urban design it points to ideas about building the physical city in ways that promote mental health and well-being (e.g., Roe & McCay, 2021; Masoudinejad & Hartig, 2020; Cahn & Segal, 2016). In this chapter, we use “restorative city” to mean an idea, a philosophy with a set of practices, and a social movement advanced through relationship building, in which participants seek to reshape the lived experience of a city for its residents as they interact with government, other institutions, and each other as community members. Of course, urban design and urban governance can (and do) intersect in ways that are “restorative,” but our focus in this chapter is on the regulatory effects of restorative practices (rather than physical environments) on individual and group behaviors and city governance.

Cities that are adopting a restorative philosophy are doing so in order to create communities in which “restorative justice” is a shared value. Most restorative cities began with a program or project grounded in restorative justice, and then build this project out to city-wide scale through one or more policy portfolios. Restorative justice is a concept drawn from the field of criminology that prioritizes social cohesion and reintegration of offenders over punitive sanctions, particularly imprisonment. We explore this definition in more detail below.

The restorative city idea has applications beyond the criminal justice system, with potential applications in schools, workplaces, homes, and communities. In this broader sense, a city grounded in restorative justice norms is one in which people are more intentionally focused on their relationships with one other and with—and within—institutions. Relational flourishing and minimizing relational harm are central to a restorative city, as community and government actors build social and cultural resiliency, and continually work to create a safer, empowered, accountable and happier society through increased social capital and more cohesive and healthy communities. Addressing harms, including historical wrongs, is an important feature of “becoming” a restorative city. In Canberra, the city site that we discuss in more detail below, addressing the relationships of harm that Traditional Owners and local Indigenous communities—particularly local Ngunnawal Elders—have experienced has indicated that the voices of our First Nations peoples must guide restorative efforts.

This sounds like an appealing vision for any city, but the question that we ask in this chapter is what experience to date tells us about the conditions a restorative city requires to germinate and flourish. In other words, what is required to make the practice match the rhetoric and move beyond “regulatory ritualism” (Braithwaite, Makkai, & Braithwaite, 2007), or the risk that political actors will simply invoke “restorative” values as a way of improving the image of a city and its governance without transforming its institutions or service delivery?

We approach this chapter as “insider-outsiders.” Taylor is the former Director of the Regulatory Institutions Network (now School of Regulation and Global Governance) at the Australian National University, established by her colleagues, John and Valerie Braithwaite. John Braithwaite is recognized internationally as a leading theorist of restorative justice and is an empirical scholar who has tested the practices flowing from that idea both domestically and internationally (Braithwaite, 2002). Ivec is a social worker whose career includes non-government and government sectors. Her policy development role in social welfare led to research collaboration with Valerie Braithwaite, a leading thinker on responsive regulation (e.g. Braithwaite, 2007). Ivec convened the Canberra Restorative Community¹ for six years as a grassroots network of over 500 members with an interest in restorative approaches to Canberra’s social problems. The restorative community network is made up of individuals: Ngunnawal Traditional Owners and Indigenous Elders, those with backgrounds in, or currently involved with, civil society activism or non-profit organisations, academics, retired and current public servants, and a range of practitioners across legal, health, education, justice, social welfare domains. Together, the network has charted the policy course for many of the elements necessary to make Canberra a restorative city and community.²

From Restorative Justice to Restorative Cities

The “restorative” quality of a restorative city does not have a universally agreed-upon definition but has its roots in the concept of restorative justice, which is a relational theory about how to build “community capital” (Braithwaite, 1989). The essence of relational justice is its focus on repairing relationships after conflict or harm, whether at the individual or the group level. The key idea is that healing the relationship between a marginalized person or group and a community is the basis for reintegration. This marginalization could be socio-economic, or it could involve ethnic enclaves; it could describe the situation of First Nations people, or it could relate to people in contact with any stage of the criminal justice system.

Restorative justice emerged as a critique of conventional modes of dispensing justice, particularly criminal justice, and the socially disintegrative effect of adversarial and punitive processes. Conventional criminal justice processes that emphasize retribution did not seem particularly responsive to an individual’s circumstances—particularly those of young or first offenders—or to admit the possibility of diverting people from pathways to prison. By focusing exclusively on the offender and the offender’s crime against the state, conventional criminal justice paid little or no attention to the victim—the person or community affected by the harmful behavior. A key idea in restorative culture is establishing prevention and intervention procedures at an early stage—at the community level for situations of unrest or conflict (Mannozzi, 2019, p. 289)—rather than simply relying on the state to provide remedies after the harm has occurred.

The “restorative” character of restorative justice relocates the offender into human relationships with family and community as well as with those affected by the harm. It seeks to reduce the likelihood of recidivism by the offender, as well as recognizing the importance of making good the harm experienced by victims. The hope of restorative justice is that it will influence offenders in ways that help them avoid re-offending, but regardless of whether this actually happens, it seeks ways to recognize and repair the social relationships impacted by their behavior. It seeks to heal.

A paradigmatic “practice” in a restorative justice system is conferencing: the consensual, facilitated conversation between offender and victim, often joined by other supporting or affected participants. This may take place in addition to, or in place of, any stage in the criminal justice procedure. A criminal justice setting is by no means the only space in which restorative practices are used. Today, this style of facilitated conference is used in a wide range of remedial processes in workplaces and within large institutions:

Restorative practices aim to strengthen relationships, increase effective communication skills, and repair harm and inappropriate behaviour in settings including education, workplaces, the local community and the sporting field. (Anderson & Ross, 2018, p.5)

“Circle time” is also a prominent restorative practice where students, co-workers, or other groups of people come together in a circle to talk to each other and develop relationships (Anderson & Ross, 2018, p. 6).

One domain where a restorative approach has worked well in Canberra is in the Circle Sentencing Court,³ part of the Magistrates Court (court of first instance). Galambany means “We all, including you” in the Ngunnawal language spoken by local traditional owners of the land in the Canberra region. The purpose of the Galambany Court is to provide effective and restorative processes to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander defendants through community involvement in sentencing. The Magistrate sits alongside panel members and Elders who are invited by the Magistrate to contribute to the sentencing process.⁴ A cost-benefit analysis found that a circle sentencing process helps persons appearing before the Court better maintain employment; improves the health of offenders and their families; improves educational opportunities; reduces the risks of homelessness; helps to reduce violence against women and reduce the number of children in care and protection.  Overall the approach was an effective use of resources, with significant benefit to the local community. The Galambany Court also plays an important role in enhancing relationships between the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and the Canberra criminal justice system.

A fairly common domain for the application of restorative practices in other cities is in the delivery of child welfare and social services. A family group conference, for example, is a space in which family members can talk together about problems and issues faced by the family, and develop plans and solutions that will allow them to move forward. State agencies or child welfare organizations are represented in these conferences, but the ideal is that the family members involved have agency in formulating a parenting plan or narrowing the issues in dispute to find a way forward that will work in their particular context.⁵

What restorative practices like these have in common is a desire to go beyond the limitations of the fairly blunt instruments of state intervention and an explicit preference for democratic, rather than hierarchical or oppressive practices.

Restorative, Responsive, Inclusive, Accountable

When we translate restorative justice as a feature of city governance, it takes on qualities that clearly intersect with theories of responsive regulation (e.g., Braithwaite, 2002). In many of the restorative city manifestos, “restorative” also means respectful, fair, and democratic processes that shape service delivery. Or as Straker puts it,

The development toward the new paradigm of a restorative city would suggest a rejection of the existing patriarchal paradigm of city governance and existing patterns of engagement of individuals, groups and communities (Straker, 2019, p. 325)

Conceptually, this would seem to intersect with the idea of the “inclusive city” narrated by Anttiroiko in this volume, but the “restorative city” is one in which government is an actor, not the actor, and where government is called upon to change its behaviors, not simply to exhort other actors to do so. It also points to the qualities and behaviors we seek in state and non-state professional actors as they help to meet the relational needs of individuals and communities. A restorative community calls upon each member to reflect upon and enact an intentional, relational way of being. The concept of “ubuntu”, or “I am through you,” provides a deeper sense of the essence of the restorative city. How all these elements are designed and operate varies with the host environment. We discuss some of these variations below.

Restorative Cities Worldwide

There is no single definition of, or international standard for, what constitutes a “restorative city” (Straker, 2019, p. 325). Those cities that wish to define themselves as “restorative” do so by self-nominating, as in the case of Hull, a city in the north of England that was the first mover in 2010. This, then, is a relatively new movement, but it has inspired similar efforts and announcements by cities in various parts of the world, including:

• Australia: Canberra⁶, Newcastle⁷

• New Zealand: Whanganui

• United Kingdom: Hull, Leeds, Brighton, Bristol

• United States: Oakland (California)

• Europe: Leuven (Belgium); Como, Tempio Pausiana, and Lecco (Italy); Wroclaw (Poland); Tirana (Albania)

These cities are also part of one or more transnational networks,⁸ along with various local networks and epistemic communities comprised of researchers, community activists, and practitioners that are nested within, and continuously draw upon, their wider communities. As new restorative cities emerge, they generate an informal set of design characteristics and features against which aspiring restorative cities can assess themselves (e.g., Newcastle Law School, n.d.).

What we also notice in this list is that these tend to be mid-size, provincial cities—even Canberra, which is a national capital, is actually a medium-sized semi-rural city of 400,000. They also tend to be cities facing one or more economic and social challenges, often triggered by industrial decline. But being in crisis is not a necessary precondition for becoming a restorative city. What seems to be more important is

the sensitivity of the individuals working in strategic sectors to start-up restorative city projects: they could be school managers, university lecturers, representatives from the social services and from the non-profit sector and magistrates. Much depends on the ability of these individuals to meet and dialogue (Mannozzi, 2019, p. 289).

The catalyst is often a call to action for a new way of thinking about and addressing social harms, which in turn builds social capital and cohesion. Newcastle in Australia, which is an aspiring restorative city, describes its challenges this way:

The city of Newcastle in New South Wales has faced significant challenges in the last two decades due to the erosion of traditional industry and employment opportunities. Across the city there is now growing evidence of much needed urban renewal . . . some residents, including young families, continue to be disadvantaged by a lack of suitable employment opportunities, and education, housing, child welfare, and criminal justice systems that do not adequately address harms and hardships, with the potential to exclude these residents from a variety of opportunities open to others. Social, cultural and economic renewal could be furthered by Newcastle becoming a restorative city. (Anderson & Ross, 2018, p. 1).

Mannozzi (2019) suggests that there are nine essential elements, or steps, for those who wish to establish a restorative city:

1. Identify the key values of restorative justice to detect the main inspiration behind the interventions to be implemented;

2. Be aware of the linguistic challenge, which implies the need to promote and encourage the ability to use, where necessary, a restorative language (which is careful, welcoming, nonjudgmental, and cooperative) in the various contexts where they intend to intervene;

3. Know the best practices already in use elsewhere that implement a restorative approach;

4. Raise awareness in the community of the meaning, the potential, and the limits of restorative justice;

5. Enter into agreements and memoranda of intent with institutions and organizations operating within the territory;

6. Identify gatekeepers capable of intercepting conflict and understanding its extent;

7. Be able to create practical roots for the restorative management of conflict;

8. Understand the need to rely on adequately trained, qualified mediators and facilitators;

9. Take the opportunity to scientifically supervise the project in synergy with institutions and universities. (p. 290)

In practice, as Straker (2019) points out, no single city has followed all of these steps. The way in which each city defines itself as “restorative” and what kinds of policies and programs they prioritize is different in each case.

Whanganui, New Zealand has a particularly well-articulated definition of what a “restorative city” looks like when viewed through the experience of its residents:

A Restorative City is where the population:

• Enjoy a safe, calm environment

• Value relationships based on equal respect, concern, care, and dignity

• Enjoy a positive cultural identity

• Understand both the negative and positive impacts of our behaviour

• Take responsibility for our actions and repair harm we may have caused others

• Have our voices heard and are tolerant of differing views

A Restorative City can be measured by:

• Reduced child abuse, domestic violence, and other criminal activities

• Reduced absenteeism / stand downs and increased academic achievement in schools

• Reduced absenteeism / bullying and sabotage in workplaces and increased productivity

• Increased satisfaction when interacting with government and non-government agencies

• Increased feelings of safety in homes and walking the streets

• Increased sense of community belonging⁹

However, this is not a universal definition. Some cities focus on addressing conflict and crime; this may involve interventions with young people, initiatives to address antisocial behavior, or work to reduce community polarization and hate crime. Others may focus on reducing tensions that lead to intergroup conflicts and building opportunities for dialogue and tolerance. In some cities, the emphasis will be on changing city service delivery. Many restorative city projects focus on children and young people:

the goal is to ensure that, by the time these young people grow up and move into leadership positions within the cities, restorative practices have become second nature (Anderson & Ross, 2018, p. 2).

More recently, some cities have also focused on redressing historical institutional abuses of children and vulnerable people in the wake of waves of disclosures in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Europe that have uncovered decades of abusive behavior in church-run and charitable institutions.¹⁰ These restorative processes and schemes of redress can operate across multiple national and sub-national levels and within networks of institutions. Restorative approaches have been important in these cases because the time limitation periods for making civil or criminal claims against the perpetrators of harm have often expired, either because the victims are elderly or dead or because gathering evidence for adversarial proceedings is impractical, impossible, or would further harm the victims (e.g., Vernon, 2018).

In the case of Whanganui, the intention was to “dispel the idea . . . that the restorative approach was only applied when there is conflict or harm done” (Straker, 2019, p. 326). Leuven, on the other hand, adopted the restorative city project explicitly to deal with conflict (Straker, 2019, p. 327). It is worth noting that many other cities worldwide adopt policies or practices that would align with the Whanganui model; alternatively, they may consciously design restorative practices for dealing with one or more types of social policy challenge without necessarily declaring themselves to be a “restorative city.” Halifax, Nova Scotia is one such example.¹¹ Extensive use of restorative approaches by key institutions including Restorative Boards of Inquiry as an alternative to traditional Boards of Inquiry are now well established in the Province (e.g. Human Rights Commission,¹² Nova Scotia Government¹³). Braithwaite et al (2019) and Tito-Wheatland (2018) provide further analysis of restorative networks in other jurisdictions not mentioned in this chapter. These networks are at the core of the restorative city model.

As Straker points out, while the malleability of the “restorative city” concept is a strength, it can quite quickly become an operational challenge when the declaration bumps up against the pragmatic need to show what the values mean: “how restorative approaches fit within existing contexts and what impact that existing context will have on its development” (Straker, 2019, p. 327).

This becomes important when, as is inevitable, restorative projects are evaluated, quantitatively and qualitatively—and, crucially, when there are failures or unintended consequences. The answer to those effects cannot simply be that restorative practice are intrinsically good or ideal simply because they exist (Straker, 2019, p. 329, citing Wonshé, 2004)

What Makes a City “Restorative”? Policy Intervention Examples from Canberra

In early 2015, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Legislative Assembly committed to Canberra becoming a restorative city.¹⁴ The idea of “becoming” is important, because most restorative practitioners put a significant emphasis on the quality of processes, rather than technocratic measurement of “outcomes.” The government endorsement of the restorative city concept was built on a previous decade of work, including a pilot project, the institutionalization of the idea of restorative justice, and the formation of a wide-ranging consortium of interests that supported the idea.

The initial empirical research projects were carried out as a partnership between the Regulatory Institutions Network at the Australian National University and the ACT government, its justice portfolio, police, and prison administration. The Re-Integration and Shaming Experiments (RISE) carried out in Canberra were based on earlier work devised by John Braithwaite and his collaborators in the nearby country town of Wagga Wagga. Those experiments showed that restorative practices that engaged with offenders and victims delivered positive results for both while also reducing the likelihood of offenders reoffending.

Based on the successful pilot program, the ACT government adopted restorative justice as a policy approach within its Justice portfolio. It established a Restorative Justice Unit,¹⁵ which operates under the Crimes (Restorative Justice) Act 2004 (ACT) and provides young offenders with the opportunity to engage in restorative justice conferences. By 2016, the program was expanded to allow for participation by adult offenders in restorative justice conferences. The conferencing itself resulted in payments of financial compensation by offenders to victims and also for the undertaking of a significant amount of work by young offenders to benefit their victims and the broader community. (Anderson & Ross, 2018, p. 3).

An important build-out of the Restorative Justice Unit was the addition of an indigenous guidance partner to increase indigenous participation in conferencing. The more recent iteration of this has been the Warrumbul (“Youth”) Circle Sentencing Court¹⁶ for young Indigenous offenders aged 10 to 17 years, which entails meetings between a magistrate and Indigenous community elders to develop a rehabilitation plan as an alternative to a criminal justice process. This application of restorative justice is particularly important in the ACT, where approximately a quarter of the people serving sentences at the Alexander McConachie Centre (the ACT jail) are indigenous even though Indigenous Australians make up just 2% of the national population.

From those beginnings in the modification of criminal justice processes in Canberra, restorative approaches have expanded to Indigenous Circle sentencing, the Gallambany Court, and to family and intimate partner and sexual violence (Phase 3)¹⁷. The new University of Canberra hospital has become a sister hospital to Whanganui, New Zealand, with both working to develop a restorative healthcare model based on Indigenous and Maori leadership.¹⁸ An important new development is the announcement that the ACT government will establish its own specialist coronial service (ABC News 2021) based on a restorative coronial reform process.¹⁹ It might seem unusual that a Territory that is functionally the equivalent of a State would not have a Coroner’s Office, but for many years the ACT rotated the role of coroner amongst nine sitting magistrates. That had the effect of constraining the ability of magistrates to acquire the specialized skills needed for a coronial inquiry. Long delays in performing inquests are highly distressing for the family and friends of the deceased, particularly in cases where the deceased was an Indigenous person. Australian judicial institutions have a shameful history of both causing the deaths of Indigenous people in police custody, and of covering up investigations into such deaths, so there is a deeply-felt and legitimate distrust of these institutions in some communities. The restorative hope for the new coronial service is that it will increase respect for bereaved families and communities and deliver more privacy and responsiveness when deaths requiring inquests are investigated.

Conditions and Challenges for Restorative Cities

The restorative city aims to displace the prevailing ideology of retribution and punishment for social harms and to simultaneously change institutional culture and practices. But as Burford ( 2018) observes, it is not easy to change urban, school, or welfare microsystems from within by challenging inveterate standard practices. We see those challenges in even the most committed and apparently successful examples of restorative city policy. So, for example, when we quiz our annual cohort of regulators from the ACT who are undertaking a course in the Policy and Practice of Regulation at the Australian National University, we ask them whether they are aware that Canberra is a restorative city. This cohort of regulators is drawn from outside the Justice portfolio of the government, and their answers, unfailingly, are “no”.

What this “casual empiricism” tells us is both that the restorative city label and the ideals that underpin it may have been institutionalized in the Territory’s justice system—exemplified by the Restorative Justice Unit discussed above—and that it may have very little traction in the non-justice regulatory operations of government and among the stakeholders, community groups, and individuals impacted by them. This is notwithstanding the fact that the ACT Government has dedicated staff within the Justice and Safety Directorate who are responsible for developing a cross-portfolio understanding of restorative approaches. The Canberra Restorative Community itself includes citizens who are committed public servants working in that same government.

What that points toward, of course, is one of Teubner’s “regulatory trilemma” problems: the risk of regulatory incoherence (Teubner, 1983). In this case a government, through its agencies and in its interactions with community co-regulators, proclaims itself to be restorative in some of its operations but is clearly not in others. Of course, this begs the question of just how restorative a government needs to be in order to produce a genuinely restorative city. The second challenge, which is common to all transformative policy ideas, is that they can be hostage to the present, particularly the availability of a political champion. In the case of Canberra, a succession of Attorneys-General have been supportive of restorative approaches, due to the deep roots which took hold as a result of the work in the 1990s under John Braithwaite. Currently, the Justice portfolio is held by a politically progressive Minister who also led the Greens Party, a long-time junior coalition partner to the Australian Labor Party, which has held government in the ACT since 2001. Canberra, as a capital city, has an unusual demographic that is both more educated and wealthier than the average Australian city and has supported progressive governments for more than two decades. As the next federal election approaches in 2022, a bipartisan approach is being built by the network members described in this chapter, with the current Opposition indicating strong support for restorative approaches in child protection and other areas. All these efforts have been made with the explicit intention of avoiding the restorative city being a “one person show.” We see this sometimes in school environments with a school principal who may be a restorative champion: once they leave, so too does the restorative ethos. So when key individuals rotate our of office or retire, there is an open question about how appealing the restorative city concept would be to their successors.

In an era of populism, there is always the risk that any prospective government will campaign on a “hard on crime” platform or invoke social divisions as a way of appealing to the electorate’s baser instincts. What this suggests is that a restorative city needs to institutionalize its practices and values as a way of protecting them from political oscillation.

A third challenge lies in sustaining the coalition of intermediaries that nurture relationships with and among individuals and community groups so that they can maintain a steady pressure on the government to respond to legitimate requests to adopt restorative practices. This is a kind of civic-minded volunteerism that is increasingly rare in post-industrial societies. In Straker’s overview of six restorative city case studies (2019), he identifies the common elements in a restorative city “start-up” as a community of interest or a community of practice:

A group or groups of professionals, agencies, and practitioners coming together to respond to a perceived need within their communities [and] all working in communities where restorative justice was already established to some degree (Straker, 2019, p. 326).

Having an “already established” form of restorative justice itself implies shared literacy in the concept, some form of pilot, and then the integration of the idea into one or more public processes. This suggests access to relevant ideas and the availability of like-minded people in a network willing to test them in practice. It is not surprising, then, that where restorative communities of interest or communities of practice have flourished, they have done so with help from established institutions from which they can borrow both ideas and resources. This has certainly been the case in Canberra, where the Canberra Restorative Community (facilitated initially by Mary Ivec and since 2021 convened by colleagues at the University of Canberra) has borrowed resources and institutional continuity from the city’s two universities.

Conclusion

The restorative city is a recent experiment in reconceptualizing relationships between a city government and residents, between social institutions and residents, and among residents themselves. It seeks to redefine the way in which major institutions in a city should deliver services and contribute to the well-being and resilience of their residents. Because there are no agreed-upon definitions or features of a restorative city and because restorative cities themselves define their missions differently, it is difficult to assert with confidence that being “restorative” matters in ways that are measurable. It also opens up the risk of a kind of “regulatory ritualism,” where politicians become enthused by the idea of a restorative city as a way of either improving their political credentials or spruiking (explain) an imagined future state of a city that is currently experiencing economic and social dislocation. In Australian English, when someone “spruiks” a product or a project in public, they extol its virtues like an old-style carnival salesman who does not quite believe the inflated claims he is making—politicians of all types tend to be masters of this.

On the other hand, the restorative justice concept and the practices from which the restorative city idea draws have been extensively studied and empirically assessed. This work tends to show, on balance, that restorative practices are successful in preventing reoffence and recidivism. More importantly, however, restorative practices are also shown to repair important social relationships and to attend to the needs of victims and those affected by harmful acts.

This insight is important at a time when we observe an ever-widening scope of harmful behaviour in schools, sporting contexts, workplaces, shops, institutions, natural environments, and digital spaces. Harms that are not immediately or easily dealt with through criminal procedures, such as bullying, intimidation, racial slurs, vandalism and property damage, petty theft, cruelty to animals, pollution, and destruction of natural habitats are all corrosive to community well-being, but they stem from perpetrators who are disconnected from community norms and values that prioritize tolerance, cohesion and well-being. What restorative practices offer at an individual level—and more importantly, in an aggregated way—is the opportunity to correct that misalignment and reconnect people in ways that are more likely to support and encourage positive behaviors. That, by itself, should be of enough value to recommend serious consideration of the potential of a restorative city approach.

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1. Mary Ivec acknowledges with grateful thanks here colleague and friend Fiona Tito Wheatland, who agreed to join her as they embarked on the Restorative City journey in 2014 on our visit to Whanganui, New Zealand at the invitation of the then Chief Social Worker, NZ, Paul Nixon. ↩︎

2. See: http://www.canberrarestorativecommunity.space/restorative-justice ↩︎

3. https://www.courts.act.gov.au/magistrates/about-the-courts/areas-in-the-act-magistrates-court/galambany-court ↩︎

4. ibid ↩︎

5. In Canberra, the restorative city that we discuss below, political pressure is building to allow family conferences and for the family to lead on the decisions made in a parenting plan as a matter of right. This is in part a response to the high rates at which Indigenous children are separated from their families in state-led welfare interventions. See: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6849461/family-conferences-would-be-legal-entitlement-under-canberra-liberals-plan/ Retrieved 19 October 2021 ↩︎

6. See http://www.canberrarestorativecommunity.space/ ↩︎

7. See https://www.researchgate.net/project/Newcastle-as-a-Restorative-City-Justice-Community-Education-and-Health ↩︎

8. See, for example, the European Forum for Restorative Justice (euforumrj.org) Working Group on Restorative Cities; and the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP)(iirp.edu) ↩︎

9. See https://restorativepracticeswhanganui.co.nz/the-restorative-city/ ↩︎

10. For an illustrative list see: https://caranua.ie/useful-resources/international-inquiries-into-institutional-abuse/ Retrieved 19 October 2021 ↩︎

11. https://www.dal.ca/news/2020/06/10/dalhousie-officially-launches-first-ever-international-restorati.html and https://novascotia.ca/news/release/?id=20210414002 ↩︎

12. https://humanrights.novascotia.ca/resolving-disputes/about-process/restorative-approaches ↩︎

13. https://novascotia.ca/just/RJ/ ↩︎

14. See, e.g., https://the-riotact.com/canberra-a-restorative-city/198949 ↩︎

15. See: https://justice.act.gov.au/justice-programs-and-initiatives/restorative-justice ↩︎

16. See: https://www.courts.act.gov.au/magistrates/about-the-courts/areas-in-the-act-magistrates-court/warrumbul-circle-sentencing-court ↩︎

17. https://justice.act.gov.au/justice-programs-and-initiatives/restorative-justice ↩︎

18. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WnJfLB4cfg&list=PLFcZjYDP_3PgXoZss2gk67PH3k9vrUORY&index=1&t=2s ↩︎

19. Rhian Williams, a member of the Canberra Restorative Community, has developed papers to explain and support a restorative coronial reform process describing the key elements of restorative approaches. These can be found at http://www.rhianwilliams.com.au/ ↩︎