New Collection in DRI – Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change – Ireland

The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is pleased to announce that a new collection, Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change – Ireland, has been published in the Repository through the Irish Qualitative Data Archive.

Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change (RJS4C) is a project that supports the development of restorative justice in Europe by facilitating the co-creation of national strategies. In ten countries across Europe, a core group of four persons have collaborated with domestic policymakers, practitioners, researchers, activists and other interested parties to co-create national strategies to guide their work.

As part of efforts to digitally preserve resources and datasets relating to the RJS4C project, the IQDA and DRI have successfully ingested the project website – making it the first published archived website by a member in the Repository. The website hosts the Irish arm of the RJS4C project, including case studies, service profiles, research and other resources.

About the project

The RJS4C project involved partners in Albania, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Ireland and Scotland. In each, up to four persons from policy, practice, academia and civil society act as Core Members. RJS4C is coordinated by Dr. Ian Marder (Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology), Gert Jan Slump (Restorative Justice Nederland) and the European Forum for Restorative Justice.

The purpose of the RJS4C project was threefold:

• To refocus European criminal justice systems, agencies, policies and practices around restorative principles and processes;
• To share successful strategies used to develop law, regulation, policy, practice and public awareness around restorative justice; and,
• To determine how the Council of Europe Recommendation concerning restorative justice could be used to support this work.

Of this landmark ingest, Dr Ian Marder (Assistant Professor in Criminology, Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology) said:

“It was great to work with the IQDA to get the huge dataset on this website archived. Project websites are too often left to decay after a few years. We worked really hard to collect lots of resources, such as case studies of practice in our field, that are of research, educational and practice value.

Archiving it in the Digital Repository of Ireland means that no matter what, the website is retained for the future.

I implore colleagues to consider what qualitative data they have and how they could use the IQDA to save it over the long-term or put it in the public domain. I am grateful to the IQDA for working with me on this.”

DRI Director Dr. Lisa Griffith said:

“”We are delighted to announce the first published archived website by a member in the DRI is Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change – Ireland.

Together with colleagues from IQDA, this landmark ingest showcases the potentiality of digital preservation and the spectrum of objects that can be stewarded safely for long-term preservation in the Repository.

We look forward to adding more additions from IQDA in the future – ensuring that important research and datasets such as RJS4C are available on open access for all to view and use.”

The research was funded by the Department of Justice in 2021, and the website from 2021-2023.

The RJS4C collection can now be viewed in full in the Repository.

DRI are delighted to include this valuable collection from IQDA in the Repository. Other collections in the Repository include: Reconstituting the Irish Family (RIFNET) collection of objects and associated interviews on the LGBTQ+ family experience in Ireland, Artistic Doctorate Resources, and Voices of the Irish Women’s Movement: Second wave feminism in Ireland collections.

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Image credit:  Designed by Lindsey Pointer & Illustrated by Phil Dickinson.