Environmental restorative justice in Italy: a pilot study of lawyers' perceptions

In this paper, we investigate perceptions of restorative justice (RJ) and environmental restorative justice (ERJ) of lawyers in the Busto Arsizio Bar Association, which includes all registered lawyers working in the north-west area of the city of Milan, Italy. Aim of the study: to establish whether lawyers in this area of Italy know about, and have engaged with, RJ in their work, and whether they entertain the possibility of engaging in ERJ in their future work. Methodology: we started our research by drafting of a short, rigorously anonymous, questionnaire. Percentages were tested by binomial test while relationships between questions were assessed by Fisher's exact test or Chi-square, as appropriate. A significance level α<0.05 was considered for each test. Exact p-values were computed by means of permutation methods to avoid any asymptotic approximation or distributional assumption. Findings: although many lawyers in the Busto Arsizio Bar Association have worked on judicial cases involving environmental harm, not many of them seemed to know much about RJ or ERJ. The results also show that lawyers: did not see RJ applicable to the area of environmental protection; did not have a positive opinion of the effectiveness of RJ tools in general; and had mostly never heard of ERJ. Conclusions: our study highlights the need for the establishment of a solid training in RJ processes and tools for Italian lawyers, which – in the longer term – could also lead to the more regular and effective application of RJ and ERJ.