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Summary:
This project brought together student researchers from the Research Shop, Community Engaged Scholarship Institute, University of Guelph and community partners from Family Counselling and Support Services for Guelph-Wellington and the Canadian Families and Corrections Network. Together, they created two infographics—one for youth justice and one for adult justice—that use empirical evidence to highlight the financial, practical, and rehabilitative benefits of restorative justice compared to traditional criminal justice in Canada.
Full Story:
Two community members from Family Counselling and Support Services for Guelph-Wellington and Canadian Families and Corrections Network approached the Research Shop, Community Engaged Scholarship Institute, University of Guelph in 2016 about a potential collaboration. The community members hoped to create a research product that would highlight the financial, practical, and rehabilitative benefits of restorative justice for youth offenders that they and others in the field were seeing first hand.
Together, the team decided to create an infographic—a visually appealing and accessible product that could be widely distributed. With support and feedback from the community partners throughout the research cycle, student researchers Nicole Jeffrey, Alexandra Therien, and Venus Bali from the Research Shop used data and information gathered from academic and gray literature. The final infographic depicts the typical journey of a youth offender in the Canadian justice system and compares the process, costs, and outcomes of traditional criminal justice and restorative justice.
The researchers built a strong and ongoing collaborative relationship with the community partners. The partners were very pleased with the final product and have shared the infographic widely with their networks in an effort to advocate for greater use of youth restorative justice in Canada. Little work had previously been done to provide an overview of some of the research on restorative justice. The infographic was an attempt to address this need—and in a succinct, eye-catching way.
Attesting to the strong working relationship that the team built, Nicole Jeffrey and the two community partners collaborated a second time to create an accompanying infographic about adult restorative justice.