Thank you for checking out my website!
We’re improving the site to make it more user-friendly, so recent activity might not be visible right now.
Feel free to get in touch for the latest updates
or to get more information about previous work.
I am Silvia Randazzo, freelancer consultant, criminologist, and researcher in child justice, that is all that concerns the rights and safeguards for children when they get involved in criminal proceedings as victims, and as suspects, accused or convicted for an offence.
Since 2008, my interest and expertise have strongly been defined along the areas of procedural safeguards for children in contact with the law, diversion, restorative justice and children in detention. While working as freelance researcher, I am in fact a PhD Candidate at the Leuven Institute of Criminology (KU Leuven), under the research line of Youth Justice, with a research project on diversion with children in conflict with the law in Europe.
I am also a proud member of the Child-Friendly Justice European Network (CFJ-EN), and vice-chair of the working group of the European Forum for Restorative Justice on Institutions and Restorative Justice.
More broadly, along my professional path, I have been doing research and coordinated projects covering a vast range of issues related to child justice, with always strong commitment in what can and should be done to avoid unfair treatment, stigmatisation, (re)victimisation, and discrimination of children who enter in contact with the law.
To the ones who wonder why exactly I chose this path I can hardly provide an answer, but the profound sense of urgency to commit myself in the fight against violations of one among the most neglected of vulnerable categories of people: children who are caught in the tangles of the justice system, even more so when in detention. Detention is usually a place we prefer to turn our head away from, while it is instead one of those we should mostly keep an eye on. And similarly, justice systems, while being considered “fair” and “just” by definition, are not immune to the systematic and structural discrimination, and to the flaws to which we are all exposed to.
I don’t trust the superficial appearance of things. I like to dig in and find the evidence that can be used to eventually improve the system.
i HAVE EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE AS…
RESEARCHER
Research is my first love: I like to dig in and find the evidence that can be used to improve child justice systems. With my thorough experience in both academic research and action-research I can give your project the evidence-basis you are looking for to have a meaningful impact.
Speaker and moderator
In the last few years, I have been presenting and moderating at international conferences, seminars and at online events, often acting as a spokesperson for the project I was coordinating, sometimes as the event manager, more often to share research findings.
Grant WritER
My solid experience in both research and in the project management cycle allows me to transform great ideas into concrete action plans, wishful scopes into detailed and meaningful project proposals and log frames!
By writing people (children)-oriented and budget-conscious projects, I can help you obtaining the funds you need to see your ideas and your project realised!
PROJECT MANAGER
I get hold of the multiple aspects that a good project management entails, from a good communication with partners, to a proper planning, with great attention to the budgetary aspects and to the smooth and pleasant cooperation among people.
main fields of expertise
MY STORY IN BRIEF
From sociology to my life path: child and restorative justice
Sociology taught me to be wide-open minded and very much aware of the profound inter-connections in the world we live in; criminology to dig into the reasons of all forms of human behaviour, while learning about the traditional responses to something socially and culturally defined as crime, but also about more innovative responses to address the harm and ruptures generated by a conflict (including a crime), also known as restorative justice approaches.
Child justice and restorative justice are the directions I have been followed since my university years, from my bachelor thesis (in a very far away 2005!) on Prof. Braithwaite theories on reintegrative shaming and the application of restorative justice with children in Italy (guided by dear Prof. and for me life mentor Claudia Mazzucato), to the research I conducted for my Master’s degree in Criminology, on psychopathology in youth penal facilities.
From theory to practice: in Kenya, for children
After a few years spent in Milan – where I moved when I was 18, from my hometown Caltanissetta, in the centre of Sicily – a few years of travelling followed, starting from Kenya, where I went for the first time in 2011. In Nairobi at that time, I committed for almost a year with voluntary activities with the Italian NGO “Albero della Vita” in support of a Child Protection Programme at the Nairobi Children’s Rescue Centre, the only – at that time – governmental institution hosting children, from all over the country, in need of care and protection, between 0 and 6 years old. In that year I also collaborated as a volunteer with the mission of Operation Smile Kenya as Patient Imaging Technician trainee, where tens of volunteer surgeons and anesthetists from all over the world gathered to provide surgery to children coming from all over Kenya and suffering from cleft lips and from burns.
EU Agencies and NGOs: Between Europe and Africa
In 2012, I worked a year at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, in the Rights of the Child Team, a year that made one of the most meaningful experiences of my life – personally and professionally. Some more travelling followed, from Kenya again, to Italy (Sicily), back to Kenya, working respectively for the Italian NGO CEFA in Kenya, on several projects on child justice and human rights in prison, and with Save the Children Italy, monitoring and reporting the living conditions of migrant children arrived in Italy by the sea.
In Brussels: settled, but never still
Finally, in 2017 I decided it was time for me to “settle down”. I have been living in Brussels since then, and I reunited with one of the main passions that I had put aside for a few years – restorative justice – working on an EU funded project on restorative justice with children (and co-authoring a Practical Guide with my colleague Brunilda Pali) and starting my collaboration with the European Forum for Restorative Justice and with KU Leuven.
It is in these last few years in Brussels that I also took the decision to pursue two main challenges, one of which was to work as freelance research consultant. I have since then accomplished a few important endeavours (keep browsing this site if you want to know more!). One among the others, the substantial contribution to the research and drafting of the chapter on the administration of justice of the UN Global Study on Children deprived of liberty: a long waited, challenging undertaking carried out by a team of greatly committed professionals, of which I was extremely proud to be part.
… and back to Uni again!
The other challenge I undertook and started towards the end of 2019 is a PhD in youth justice at the Leuven Institute of Criminology, KU Leuven University, with the supervision of Prof. Stefaan Pleysier and Prof. Johan Put, on the theme of diversion with children in conflict with the law.
More to come on these pages, where I will soon post some updates about the survey I am conducting in the EU (27 + UK), on diversion practices used with children accused of an offence.
If you want to know more about this research or other, get in touch!
LET’S WORK
TOGETHER!
I’m always happy to support valuable projects!
Send me an email at
silvia.randazzo@gmail.com
or use this form.
I’ll get back to you as soon as possible
Silvia Randazzo consulting 
You must be logged in to post a comment.