The Scottish Institute for Policing Research is delighted to welcome Dr. Ian Marder for a guest talk on using restorative practices to build understanding and relationships between police and minority ethnic communities.

Relationships between the police and minority ethnic communities are often characterised by tension and mistrust. It seems unlikely that the solutions lie in the traditional approaches to police-community engagement. This workshop introduces participants to restorative practices and outlines findings from recent research in Ireland and beyond that supports a dialogic approach to building understanding and relationships between the police and minority ethnic communities. It gives examples of practices from Ireland with police and young Black adults, the Travelling community and residents of refugee housing, respectively, and uses exercises from the field of design thinking to help participants gain new insights into building and repairing police-minority ethnic community relations in Scotland.

Speaker: Dr. Ian D. Marder is Assistant Professor in Criminology, Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology and Deputy Director, Maynooth Centre for Criminology Research. His activities focus on criminal justice reform, including policy and practice development and research, mostly relating to the use of restorative justice and restorative practices in criminal justice settings. In a policing context, he has researched police facilitation of restorative justice processes, the use of restorative practices to build police-community relations, and public attitudes towards restorative policing.

Everyone is welcome to attend this event!