Expert criminologists Larry Sherman and Heather Strang from Cambridge University debate the positives and negatives of restorative justice from the perspective of the police, the victims and the offenders, and discuss the latest programs for reducing re-offending in Australia as well as in the Northern hemisphere.

This was recorded at the ANU on 6 June 2017 as part of the RegNet seminar series.

ACT Chief Police Officer Justine Saunders was also scheduled to participate in this panel discussion. However, CPO Saunders was made unavailable at late notice.

The discussion was facilitated by RegNet’s Miranda Forsyth.

About the Speakers

Professor Lawrence W. Sherman is Director of the Institute of Criminology of the University of Cambridge, where he has served as Wolfson Professor of Criminology since 2007. He is also Director of the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology and Chair of the Cambridge Police Executive Programme. His research interests are in the fields of crime prevention, evidence-based policy, restorative justice, police practices and experimental criminology. For more detail visit his profile.

Dr. Heather Strang is Director of the Police Executive Programme and the Master’s degree in Applied Criminology and Police Management at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. She is also Director of Research at the Cambridge Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology and an expert in the management of randomized controlled trials, exploring a wide range of topics in criminology. Heather previously served for ten years as Director of the Centre for Restorative Justice at the Australian National University, managing the four randomised controlled trials in restorative justice known as the RISE experiments. Her research interests include the effects of crime and justice on victims of crime, the diversion of cases from prosecution to alternative disposals, as well as the application of restorative justice conferences in criminal justice as both a supplement to and diversion from prosecution. More recently she has been involved in research in the United Kingdom on police responses to domestic violence, co-directing randomised trials on programs designed to prevent repeat domestic abuse. Dr Strang has been invited to lecture on her research by universities, societies and governments in many countries around the world and has been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology. For more detail visit her profile.