Restorative justice and empathy-based interventions for animal welfare and wildlife crimes

4. Conclusions

This review has explored evidence around the use of restorative justice and empathy-based interventions in animal welfare and wildlife crime offences, and the effectiveness of such approaches.

This review has shown that there are very few identifiable examples where empathy-based interventions or restorative justice have been used for animal welfare and wildlife offences. Of the examples explored above, only AniCare is a dedicated programme incorporating restorative approaches specifically for animal welfare and wildlife offences. Other restorative justice approaches appear to have been used on an ad hoc basis. The few examples cited here indicate that these approaches could be useful in reducing reoffending for animal-related crimes, and repairing the harm done to victims and the community. This may be particularly true for young offenders.

However, this review has raised a number of questions regarding restorative justice or empathy-based approaches being used in a Scottish context. These include:

• Who should speak for the animal?
• Who should be involved in the intervention?
• Which intervention would be most suited for which animal-related offence?

How to access background or source data

The data collected for this social research publication:

☒ may be made available on request, subject to consideration of legal and ethical factors. Please contact stephanie.weir@gov.scot for further information.