Lucy Jaffe is the Director of the UK charity Why me? Transforming Lives through Restorative Justice. She has built the organisation over the last 11 years to become an influential voice promoting restorative justice in UK and Europe. She has campaigned in Parliament, with regional governments, police, prisons and probation to ensure that anyone affected by crime can have access to restorative justice. She has had great success in supporting the people directly affected to speak to people in power, which, in turn, has led to increased budget allocation, strengthened legal provision and an increasing awareness and uptake of restorative justice in the UK.
She is a member of the Advisory Board to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Restorative Justice, contributing to the 2021 Inquiry Report and the second 2022 Inquiry. She has strong fundraising and finance skills and sees this as a priority foundation stone for a stable and successful organisation. In 2015 she established a direct national restorative justice service and strives to run Why me? on restorative principles.
In the last 2 years she has been a member of the EFRJ Working Group on Violent Extremism, attending regularly and being a co-editor on the Policy and Practice Papers. She supports Why me? staff and people with lived experience to contribute to the EFRJ WG on Domestic and Sexual Violence and to attend EFRJ events, such as the Annual Conference, at which she will be co-presenting a workshop on restorative justice practice in multi-lingual settings. She has been on the Board of the Criminal Justice Alliance since 2017, which is now a 180 member UK organisation campaigning for systemic change in criminal justice. She has influenced the organisation to adopt Restorative Justice as a key part of their strategy and to increase their focus on issues affecting victims.
In the 1990s, she worked closely with parents of abducted children to establish a national charity, Reunite, to support them to get their children back. She managed media and publicity, supported individual cases and successfully campaigned with parents to introduce children's passports in the UK in the 1990s. This has prevented many more abductions and has provided victims of the crime support and a voice in making change. Lucy also worked in the corporate sector for over 15 years in a niche software company providing marketing, operating and personnel skills. During this time the company doubled in size and she implemented systems and policies to support the business, ran the marketing and sales operation and served on the Board for a number of years. She has also run her own communications consultancy. She has a strong interest in outdoor and progressive education, running children's camps in the holidays. Lucy's first language is English, she speaks French, and some German.
