Restorative justice in housing

Instead, Ms Cooper – who, like her next-door neighbours, is a tenant of WM Housing Group’s 18,000-home subsidiary Whitefriars Housing – rang her neighbourhood officer. The officer referred the case to a newly established pilot – a three-way partnership between Whitefriars, Coventry City Council and West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), which has been trialling an approach to dispute resolution called restorative justice.

Definitions of restorative justice differ depending on who you ask (see box: What does restorative justice mean?), but at its core is a meeting between two parties – one of whom must, crucially, accept they are at fault.

“The prerequisite for a restorative justice meeting is that the harmer, as we call it, takes responsibility for their behaviour,” says Jeannette Brown, a director at Restorative Approaches in Housing, a consultancy not involved with this pilot but which provides a conflict resolution service to social landlords. “They might not understand that their behaviour causes upset or harm to their neighbour. It’s in the meeting where that becomes apparent to them.”

As with mediation, the conversation in each meeting is structured and the participants are guided through it by a trained facilitator. The difference in the restorative justice approach lies in the harmer’s admission of responsibility.

"The difference in the restorative justice approach lies in the harmer’s admission of responsibility."

“People can’t do it themselves. At so many meetings we have facilitated, the neighbours say they’ve tried to resolve things over the garden fence but it just turns into a slanging match,” says Ms Brown. “And that’s because they don’t have a structure to follow. The structure works.”

Stephen Williams is restorative justice co-ordinator at Whitefriars. The local PCC, which is funding the full £73,000 cost of the pilot, approached Whitefriars and provided Mr Williams’ training. David Jamieson, the West Midlands PCC, says restorative justice is an effective response to anti-social behaviour (ASB), and says his office will be extending the service across the whole of the region starting in the summer (at present, it only covers Coventry and Birmingham).

The dispute between Ms Cooper and Ms Keita was one of the first cases referred to Mr Williams once his training was complete. Since the pilot began, around a dozen of the 58 cases that have been referred to him have ended in a meeting and a successful resolution. Some people choose not to participate in the process, which is voluntary. Others might not want to admit responsibility, while others simply move away, Mr Williams says. But those successes are of enormous value, and not just to the neighbours facing each other across the table.

Mr Williams calls restorative justice “another tool for us to use in sustaining tenancies”. He adds: “That is key for us as a landlord. We can try and find a positive outcome without one of the two parties losing their tenancy, either because they’ve moved out because of the ASB, or – worst case – someone gets evicted.”

The restorative justice approach can help to end neighbour disagreements before they escalate, he adds. And if a community is tight knit, as Mr Williams says many of those on his patch are, that rot can easily spread.

“We have been able to prevent neighbours from becoming embroiled in bigger conflicts." - Nigel Collumbell, Midland Heart

If the dispute between Ms Cooper and Ms Keita, who had been friends before their disagreement, hadn’t been resolved quickly, it might well have spoiled their relationship permanently. What turned out to be a cultural difference created a gap in understanding that wasn’t clear to either party until they sat down and talked it all through.

“I was quite annoyed because this had happened on the Friday and no one came round until the following Tuesday to apologise,” says Ms Cooper. “Kaddy – the mum – came. And that annoyed me more than the actual damage. He [Modou, Ms Keita’s son] had damaged something – the first thing you do is say sorry.”

But Ms Keita, who was born in The Gambia, had been brought up to take a different approach. “In Africa, what we know is that because I am the one who raised my son, then I should go and apologise to Angela,” she says. “But we came to understand that places are different. I didn’t know that Angela would be angry because my son didn’t come to apologise. I liked the meeting, because if I hadn’t gone there I would not have come to know about that.”

The sit-down gave them both a chance to explain how they felt and to understand each other a little better – and because Modou also attended the meeting, Ms Cooper was able to explain to him the consequences of his actions.

“I don’t think he realised what he had done, and I was able to explain to him how it made me feel,” Ms Cooper says. “You could see the look on his face during the meeting, and it was one of pure shame.” Modou agreed to pay the £80 cost of replacing the fence himself, in instalments.

The meetings usually last an hour or two, but what happens during that short time can be extremely powerful. “That change in the room from the beginning of a meeting when they don’t want to look at each other, to the end when they can be hugging and offering each other lifts home – that is the most satisfying part of [working in] ASB,” says Ms Brown. “So many people say, ‘We’ve spoken for two hours and have learned so much about each other – we should have done this years ago’.”

That is almost exactly how the meeting in Coventry ended. “We sorted everything out there,” says Ms Keita. “At the end Angela was chatting with my son – ‘When are you starting university?’ – a nice, family sort of chat. We shared a car home. ‘Don’t worry, Kaddy, we can go home together.’ I cried when she said that.”