In September 2021, Dr. Ian Marder published two articles in academic journals on his research in restorative justice and restorative practices. The first article, published in the International Journal of Restorative Justice, was co-authored with Prof. Meredith Rossner (Australia National University). Based on research and workshops conducted in 2020, their paper outlines how restorative justice services around the world responded to COVID-19 by adapting their practices and training to be suitable for online, telephone and socially distant delivery. They also discuss how restorative practitioners used their skills to provide support for colleagues, students and community members, and highlight the potential for restorative approaches to offer a path towards healing in the aftermath of the pandemic.
The article can be found here. Two responses to their article were published in the same issue – one on the adapting of restorative justice services for online delivery, and one on transitional and restorative responses to COVID-19.
Also in September, Ian co-authored an article with Dr. Matt Tidmarsh (University of Leeds), published by the British Journal of Community Justice. Their paper – Beyond marketisation: Towards a relational future of professionalism in probation after Transforming Rehabilitation – focuses on probation reform in England and Wales. They argue that recent probation reforms diminished professionalism by eroding the networks of relationships between and among people and organisations, which constitute its ability to overlay the distinct, but interlinked spheres of corrections, social welfare, treatment and the community. Their paper advocates for a strategic and evidence-based professionalism in probation practice that emphasises relational co-production. Here, a restorative practice model can support relationship building in client facing and multi-agency contexts, begin to rebuild relationships within the service and offset the worst excesses of other agendas.
The article can be found here.
Finally, September saw the European Society of Criminology annual conference, at which an article Ian published in 2020 came runner up in the European Society of Criminology Restorative Justice Working Group’s Best Article on Restorative Justice Prize. The article, published in the journal Contemporary Justice Review and entitled Institutionalising restorative justice in the police: Key findings from a study of two English police forces, outlined the key findings from Ian’s PhD on the development and practice of restorative policing in England. You can read the article here.
Ian is a European coordinator and Core Member for Ireland of Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change (RJS4C), a ten-country collaborative project that supports the implementation of the Council of Europe Recommendation concerning restorative justice in criminal matters. You can find more about the work of RJS4C in Ireland here. At Maynooth Department of Law, Ian teaches restorative justice on the MA in Comparative Criminology and Criminal Justice, and within undergraduate modules on policing and victimology.