Child Victims and Restorative Justice

"In one of the few studies of how legal systems deal with children who are victims of crime, Gal balances children's rights and needs to provide a sophisticated analysis that is both challenging and informative. This book is a must read for practitioners, scholars, and students concerned with the way institutions respond to children's needs, rights, and interests." -- Sharon Bessell, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Public Policy, Australian National University "Tali Gal's book is a milestone in the restorative justice literature. By developing a child-inclusive approach to restorative justice, a profound advance is forged in criminal law jurisprudence and victimology. The book suggests a principle of letting children go when protection cannot be clearly justified in terms of the rights and needs of children. Gal's holistic approach to rights liberates the voices of children as partners in child justice institutions. The work is littered with wonderful insights as this challenging paradigmatic change is laid out." -- John Braithwaite, PhD, Australian Research Council Federation Fellow, Australian National University "As a social worker and restorative justice proponent, I welcome Tali Gal's needs-rights model for child victims. This framework identifies that children whose rights have been transgressed require not only protection and rehabilitation but also participation in collective decision-making. All this reaffirms their control over their lives and advances their healing and development into responsible adults. Caring about children's needs is, thus, inextricably linked to their empowerment within a supportive community." -- Joan Pennell, PhD, Professor of Social Work and Director of the Center for Family and Community Engagement, North Carolina State University "In this persuasive book, Dr. Gal explores better ways of addressing the difficulties faced by victimized children in the criminal justice system. She is particularly attentive to the potential of restorative justice and, by using a framework encompassing both children's rights and children's needs, she proposes principles for action that might significantly improve their experience. Through a thoughtful consideration of both theory and empirical research findings, Dr. Gal unpacks the special problems they face and makes constructive and imaginative proposals for change." -- Heather Strang, PhD, Director, Center for Restorative Justice, Australian National University and Senior Research Fellow, University of Cambridge "It is certainly the most intellectually systematic and wide-ranging account of childhood victimisation and the responses to childhood victimisation, particularly with regard to the weakness of the current criminal justice system, that I have read. This powerful and thoughtful inter-disciplinary review is combined with an exploration of the tenets of RJ and uses a needs/ rights model to demonstrate the challenges to RJ involving child victims (including cases of child sexual abuse that the author describes as a 'special case warranting special consideration') and its potential benefits for them." -- The British Journal of Social Work "It is certainly the most intellectually systematic and wide-ranging account of childhood victimisation and the responses to childhood victimisation, particularly with regard to the weakness of the current criminal justice system, that I have read. This powerful and thoughtful inter-disciplinary review is combined with an exploration of the tenets of RJ and uses a needs/ rights model to demonstrate the challenges to RJ involving child victims (including cases of child sexual abuse that the author describes as a 'special case warranting special consideration') and its potential benefits for them... Throughout, the author is clear about her goal to bring academics and social workers together in an effort to address the difficulties faced by victimised children." -- Dr Ian Paylor, Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University, British Journal of Social Work "This is a powerfully thoughtful review of a wide range of interdisciplinary literature relevant to improving our responses to childhood victimization, advancing our understanding of ongoing struggles over the meaning of law and rights, the weaknesses of current criminal justice system responses to childhood victimization, and the promises and challenges associated with restorative justice approaches... For all these reasons I recommend this book to students, scholars and practitioners because it is serious, thoughtful, and consciously works to bring scholars and practitioners together around an effort to improve our capacity to think about and respond to childhood victimization by displacing unproductive dichotomous frameworks with a more comprehensive and pragmatic model that integrates empirical data on needs and normative aspirations on rights." -- Bill Lyons, Law and Politics Book Review "All in all, Child Victims and Restorative Justice: A Needs-Rights Model is a valuable contribution to existing victimological research. It also offers an important framework for those in the field of restorative justice, whether practitioners, activists or decisionmakers. Thirdly, the book is essential reading for all those who wish to examine the criminal process from the victim's perspective. As Gal notes, restorative justice hardly replaces all criminal justice processes, and both of these paradigms need research-based knowledge on how to contribute to the well-being of children and young people as victims of crime." -- Päivi Honkatukia, University of Tampere, Finland, Restorative Justice