Handbook on Restorative justice programmes

Use of volunteers: There are clearly some great advantages to involving
community volunteers, sometimes in collaboration with professionals, in
the delivery of the programme. Efforts should be made to ensure that vol-
unteers are recruited from all segments of the community, with appropri-
ate gender, cultural and ethnic balance. Their presence will help forge
deeper links between the community and the justice system. In Thailand,
for example, members of the community are recruited as volunteer proba-
tion officers who can also act as facilitator of a restorative justice process. 
The use of volunteers can also enable community members to develop
skill sets and to assume a major role in the response to crime and social
disorder in their community as well as to facilitate problem solving and
offender and victim reintegration.
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Volunteers can also be used as train-
ers and as facilitators. For example, in Lambeth (in South London), an
outside trainer provided the first training course for volunteer mediators
and volunteers who had gained practical experience with the programme
organized subsequent training courses.
One should also note that many new programmes are developed and
funded on the basis of an assumption that the community will get
involved and provide a great share of the resources required, mostly in the
form of volunteers. That assumption needs to be verified carefully. Not all
communities have excess resources to devote to new programmes or to
build restorative practices into existing into existing community-based
justice processes. The prevailing local attitudes towards volunteering in
general or volunteering within the criminal justice system can be very dif-
ferent from one community to the next or from one culture to another.
chapter 4