Lessons for restorative justice from methods and conceptual frameworks used in community building

This paper reflects the preliminary findings of an exploratory research into the links between restorative justice and community building in Flanders. It seems that both sectors could profit more from their common ground and their mutual strengths. The restorative justice philosophy appears to be relatively unknown in the Flemish community building sector. Nevertheless underlying values and working principles of RJ are also central to much of the community building work. A more in depth analysis of this common ground might show that community building is in fact a fertile ground for introducing core principles of RJ to (vulnerable) citizens in a context outside the criminal justice system. Equally RJ can learn from the methods used in community building, which are less exclusively focused on oral communication, but introduce different forms of diapraxis, transformation of shared reality by means of dialogue and action. A key mission of community building is to support groups of vulnerable citizens in order to make effective their social rights to housing, education and welfare. RJ can learn from the strategies community building uses to address these structural problems and from the different forms of community participation they set up in order to deal with these problems. Effectively addressing the structural dimension of problems arising during restorative justice processes and adequate community participation in restorative justice processes are two issues the RJ community has been struggling with for a long time.status: publishe