Criminal Justice Ethics workshop: RJ City focus group

The University of Hull organised a day long focus group on Thursday 9 September 2004 entitled RJ City Focus Group which was sponsored by the Institute of Applied Ethics.  RJ City is a research and design project to conceive what a jurisdiction might look like that responded to all crimes, criminals and victims as restoratively as possible.

Daniel Van Ness, Vice-President of the Prison Fellowship International based in Washington DC, led the focus group.  He is one of the leading figures in the international social movement promoting the use of restorative justice.

The group participants included some of the leading figures in the UK restorative justice movement and a number of local and national practitioners, whose job is the management of restorative justice programmes.

The key purpose of the focus group was to collect feedback on the question Does the approach taken (a decentralised, interrelated network) make sense philosophically and practically?