Book review: Restoring Harm: A Psychosocial Approach to Victims and Restorative Justice

DOI10.1177/02697580211022548
Date01 September 2021
Published date01 September 2021
Subject MatterBook reviews
Book reviews
Daniela Bol´
ıvar
Restoring Harm: A Psychosocial Approach to Victims and Restorative Justice
Routledge: London, 2019; 350 pp.: ISBN 9780367662516 (ebk).
Reviewed by: Diana Batchelor, Oxford University, UK
DOI: 10.1177/02697580211022548
Reams have been written about the victim’s position in restorative justice (RJ), but empirical
studies remain surprisingly scarce. Conducting longitudinal studies with vulnerable victims of
crime is especially fraught with difficulties, yet Bol´ıvar has overcome many hurdles to base this
comprehensive analysis of victim–offender mediation on data of a rare quality.
Bol´ıvar interviewed 50 victims before they participated in victim–offender mediation, then
completed follow-up interviews with 36 of them. A further 74 victims filled in a questionnaire
beforehand, of whom 60 completed a second questionnaire at the end of the restorative process.
Notably, this method gave her the opportunity to interview victims who wished to communicate
with the offender but were unable to do so, as well as to compare victims’ stated expectations with
their experiences. The studies were conducted in Spain and Belgium, with people who had most
often been victims of physical assault. Based on the data, as well as a review of the literature
(chapter 1), Bol´ıvar documents victims’ experiences, from their reactions to the crime (chapter 2),
and their expectations of mediation (chapter 3), to their post-mediation attitudes (chapter 4).
In chapter 1, Bol´ıvar lists measures which have previously been used to assess whether RJ
processes benefit victims – including satisfaction, a reduction in post-traumatic stress disorder
symptoms, closure, a decrease in negative emotions or an increase in positive ones, meeting justice
needs and procedural justice needs, and changing the meaning that victims ascribe to the crime.
She then challenges whether these measures are sufficient to identify potential negative effects and
to determine whether RJ is appropriate for all victims, particularly in the absence of long-term
measures and frequent instances of self-selection bias. She is especially critical of ‘satisfaction’ as
a measure of the benefits victims may experience, and she writes that we need a better measure of
the psychosocial aspects of their experience.
In chapter 2, Bol´ıvar details the effects of crime on the participants, highlighting two aspects of
the ‘social’ in psychosocial that have often been overlooked in accounts of criminal victimisation.
First, because victims perceive crime to be ‘wrong’ as well as ‘harmful’, Bol´ıvar argues that the
reactions of the community and society are more important to crime victims than other victims
(e.g. of natural disasters). This argument is continued in the epilogue where she further explores the
role of victim relationships with the offender and with their communities, which she states have
been missing from theories of trauma and victimisation. Second, although some participants in this
study had been victims of relatively minor crimes, many of them described experiencing
International Review of Victimology
2021, Vol. 27(3) 363–368
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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