Tali Gal: Child Victims and Restorative Justice: A Needs-Rights Model

Abstract

In Child Victims and Restorative Justice: A Needs-Rights Model, Tali Gal aims to create a model for children’s rights in the legal system. Gal presents models that center on child victims’ rehabilitation and protection in a way that reveals the immense complexities of legal issues, psychological considerations, shortcomings of the criminal justice system, and even the limitations of restoration itself. Gal examines the models and works to establish a human rights discourse to use for children’s rights in the legal system, considering the rights of both child victims and child offenders. Gal’s main goal is to create a needs-rights model that will aid child victims throughout court process and continue through rehabilitation. The book is organized by examining children’s rights, child victims’ needs, child victims in the criminal justice system, restorative justice for child victims, and child-inclusive restorative justice. Gal also works to provide a framework for effective restorative justice by looking at successful experiences from different countries. Although researchers interested in adolescent development have long examined the nature of victimization, especially its effects (see Evans et al. 2012), how such research might find its way to influencing policy and the nature of adolescents’ rights largely has remained ignored. Gal provides an important model to follow. Significantly, Gal’s text does not relate directly to the adolescent period but greatly speaks to it and exemplifies how research can be used to develop thoughtful responses to victimized youth. The text does so particularly by examining the promises and challenges associated with restorative justice approaches that could serve as models to counter the inadequacies of systems responding to youths’ victimization. The text demonstrates well how the rights of children are difficult to define and implement in the legal system. While children are entitled to basic human rights like any other person, children cannot always exercise these rights. The power to exercise the child’s rights lies in the hands of the child’s parents, or in special circumstances, the state will step in as the role of the parent. Having the parents or the state act on behalf of a child raises the question of whether they are acting in the child’s best interest. Gal uses his background in working as a children’s rights lawyer to examine the shortcomings of the legal system in regards to how child victims and their families could exercise the rights of the child. Being considered a highly vulnerable population, children are entitled to having more protection in the legal system; however, that extra protection runs the risk of infringing on children’s rights. This concern for potentially infringing on children’s rights in the name of protecting them that led to the rise of restorative justice, which began to rise in popularity in the mid-1990s as an alternative or complementing process in the criminal justice system. While research has not fully focused on child victims, data exists showing successful experiences between children and restorative justice’s processes. That research serves as the foundation for the book. In the first chapter, Gal analyzes the effectiveness of his needs-rights model when used for children’s rights through the criminal justice system. Gal states that this needs-rights model and current rights rhetoric both empower children structurally and strengthen relationships. Interestingly, Gal recommends, ‘‘to educate children and adults on children’s rights and to fully respect the rights of the child, including the participation right’’ (Gal, 2011, p.13). To examine children’s right effectively; Gal looks at several discourses and discusses the importance of moving from needs versus rights to needs-rights based models. Gal’s reasoning for the