Stan Winford
DirectorStan helped establish the Centre for Innovative Justice (CIJ) at RMIT University and the CIJ’s restorative justice arm, Open Circle. He is a practising lawyer and justice expert with experience in innovation and reform.
Stan’s work has established new applications for restorative and therapeutic justice in criminal and civil justice systems. His expertise is recognised across government and legal sectors. He has been appointed to advise expert advisory councils on sentencing law, disability support, government responses to institutional abuse and legal assistance services, and engaged by the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System to facilitate consultations on justice and mental health issues and by the Aboriginal Justice Caucus to develop legislation and policy.
Stan is Chief Investigator on projects that involve research with victims of crime, workplace deaths and transport accidents, people with disability, serious high risk offenders and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. An overarching aim of Stan’s work translating research into meaningful change for people and marginalised communities who are overrepresented in Australian justice systems. Research impact has been achieved through multiple strategies, including sustained strategic advocacy via submissions and evidence to government inquiries, law reform bodies and Royal Commissions; by translating research into working pilot programs that deliver improved outcomes and better justice processes for marginalised communities. The projects, including TAC’s restorative justice program, Yallum Yallum and others, also create an authorising environment for change, by building awareness and support for innovative justice alongside conventional justice responses.
Stan’s research engagement strategies have also focused on building the capacity of people closest to problems in the justice system to develop responses to the challenges they face, and to bring research expertise to bring about self-determined solutions. This approach has generated substantial impact at scale. Examples include research supporting the law reform efforts of Aboriginal communities to regulate criminal history or create their own dispute-resolution systems; research enabling people with ABI to advocate for improved responses in the criminal justice system; and the creation of restorative justice programs to demonstrate the benefits an alternative justice pathway can bring to people who have been harmed, in ways conventional responses cannot in complex contexts such as road trauma, sexual violence, racism and institutional abuse.
In addition to teaching law and social work students at RMIT and public policy at ANZSOG, Stan has studied restorative justice in New Zealand and received training in Europe in restorative responses to serious crime. Stan is Deputy Chair of the Sentencing Advisory Council, Expert Advisor to the Independent Advisory Council to the NDIS and a facilitator for the National Redress Scheme, the Stolen Generations Redress Scheme and the Defence Force. Stan was Senior Legal Advisor to the Attorney-General and has worked as a prosecutor and defence lawyer in the private, government and community legal sectors. Stan regularly contributes to media as an expert on law and justice issues.