The European Commission has recently published the EU Strategy on victims’ rights (2020-2025), which includes both a current state of the victims’ rights and satisfaction, but also a series of decisions and recommendations to promote satisfactory justice practices and experiences for victims throughout the Member States. This EU Strategy focuses on a two-pronged approach based on the empowerment of victims of crime and on the cooperative work towards their rights, in which the dissemination of quality legal information is also a main path. Increased awareness of the specific circumstances of some crimes, such as gender-based violence and hate crimes, is also mentioned as a relevant objective of this long-term strategy. A key aspect of said empowerment and awareness-raising is that of restorative justice, the basic perspective of the LetsGoByTalking research-action project.
The EU Strategy considers restorative justice from a wide and flexible standpoint and construes it as a key path towards a satisfactory and healing justice experience for victims of crime. Each victim’s interests and needs must always be held as the main consideration, and restorative measures may thus provide a safe environment that avoids secondary victimisation. The EU Strategy highlights the lack of knowledge about restorative justice among both professionals and victims, and the need for high quality services and training provided by Member States. As such, the LetsGoByTalking project is particularly well-suited for these challenges, as it may provide the Member States and EU public institutions with nuanced data, best practices, and training materials for the needed high quality restorative justice measures.
More info: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=COM:2020:258:FIN