This is a blog by Why me? Ambassador, Jaymelea Hurren.
When people hear the words restorative justice, they often think about what happens after a crime has been committed. Reparation, healing, victim awareness.
For me, restorative justice is much more personal than that, it can be a prevention.
I have experienced the restorative justice process following the murder of my father. Going through that process gave me a deeper understanding of harm, accountability, responsibility, impact and repair, and those lessons have stayed with me.
Since then, I have had opportunities to speak in schools and prisons, deliver training and share my lived experience with professionals, offenders and young people. But one of the most meaningful ways those experiences have influenced me is through my professional role.
I am a Registered Service Manager of supported accommodation for young care leavers aged 16-18. I support young people through the transition into adulthood, helping them develop the skills, confidence and independence they need to build safer and more positive futures, young people who often have experienced trauma, adversity or harm.
That means my role goes far beyond teaching practical skills such as cooking, budgeting and managing a home.
A huge part of our work is helping young people understand risk, relationships, boundaries, responsibility, consequences, and understanding their own lives – because our circumstances shape us, but they don’t have to define us.
We talk about healthy relationships, alcohol, peer pressure, child sexual exploitation (CSE) and child criminal exploitation (CCE), conflict and safeguarding. We help young people recognise risks within their communities and develop the skills to make safer choices.
For me, restorative approaches naturally sit alongside this work.
When something happens that has caused harm or affected another person, we can move beyond simply asking, “What rule was broken?”, or “what consequences they should face?”
Instead, we can ask:
What happened?
Who was affected?
What was the impact?
What could have been done differently?
And what can we do to put things right?
These questions encourage young people to think about the consequences of their actions and the people around them, rather than simply focusing on whether they are going to be punished, restorative justice opens the world of reflective practice.
That distinction is important.
Young people are learning how to become adults. They will make mistakes. Our role is not to remove every opportunity to get things wrong, but to help them learn from those experiences and develop the ability to take responsibility, and to take risks safely.
Sometimes that might mean an apology. Sometimes it might mean repairing a relationship or putting something right. Sometimes the most important thing is simply helping a young person understand another person’s perspective, or why they behaved or reacted that way.
My own experience of restorative justice helps me recognise these opportunities within my work.
I know what it means to sit with difficult emotions, to hear different perspectives and to think about harm and its impact. I’ve taken the skills and understanding I gained through my own restorative journey and brought them into my professional practice.
My experience of crime changed my life. But the knowledge and understanding I gained through my own restorative justice journey has stayed with me. I have carried those lessons into the schools and prisons where I have spoken, into the training I deliver, and into my professional role supporting young people.
I have taken something incredibly painful and used what I have learned from it to help me recognise opportunities for reflection, accountability, repair and positive change in others.
This is where I believe restorative justice has the potential to change more than one life.
If we can help a young person understand the impact of their actions, recognise harm, take responsibility and learn how to repair relationships, we’re giving them skills that can extend far beyond one incident.
Those skills can influence their friendships, relationships, future families, workplaces and communities.
And perhaps that is what restorative justice means to me now.
It isn’t about pretending harm didn’t happen.
It isn’t about removing accountability.
And it certainly isn’t about forgetting the impact on victims.
It’s about recognising that what happens after harm can influence what happens next.
My life was changed by murder. I can’t change what happened to my family.
But I can choose what I do with what I’ve learned.
For me, restorative justice has come full circle.
Something that began with the devastating impact of crime became part of my healing and understanding, and those lessons are now helping me support the next generation.
My experience changed my life.
What I’ve learned from it now has the potential to influence others.
And maybe that’s the ripple effect of restorative justice: one life can be changed, and that change can reach many more.
