Offenders to face victims

[andrewducker]

This is a fantastic idea (in certain circumstances). It should help both victims and perpetrators to move on.

People who commit crimes could avoid prosecution if they agree to face-to-face meetings with their victims and see the impact of their offences, it has been suggested.

Both victims and offenders would have to consent to taking part in the scheme with the perpetrator admitting to the offence.

Restorative justice has so far been confined largely to young offenders but will be stepped up to include more adult offenders, school bullies and anti-social hooligans.

Mr Blunkett said: "Restorative justice means victims can get an apology from their offender, but it is about more than 'saying sorry' - it provides the victim with an explanation of why the crime was committed.

"This is something a prison sentence on its own can never do and can enable victims to move on and carry on with their lives.

"It also means that for the first time offenders will be personally held to account for the crimes they have committed."

Comments

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

By the way, I don't think you can say that prison is not a deterrence. I think that, without taking away the possibility of jail, you can't compare how life would be without it.

But there are plenty of opportunities to compare situations where people have been given community service orders or whatever and people who've been sent to prison for comparable crimes. (And, as I recall, practically anything else has a lower recidivism rate.) Unless you meant that the threat of jail has to be there, which I agree with.

[andrewducker]

That's the problem - how do you threaten people with jail (which probably keeps down a fair bit of casual crime) while not sending people to jail (which doesn't stop them doing it again)?

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Well, I think there are people who should not be on the streets while they work on their tendencies to commit crime - serial rapists, for example - and there are people who wouldn't agree to take part in restoratively-based programmes and therefore need other forms of punishment, and for them, jail needs to stay an option. So there would still be jails, though I think jail isn't incompatible with restorative justice; most of the meetings between murderers and their victims' families have taken place while the killer was in jail.

I'd interpret "restorative" pretty widely, by the way, to include restoration to communities as a whole, and taking part in education about communities that the person has targeted, as well as "meeting the victims". Whatever it takes to humanise the crime, really.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

Probably more productive is to ask how to change the jail system, so that it does prevent people from returning there.

Maybe more programs to help criminals receive real jobs after they are released. Maybe smaller prisons, more programs while the criminals are in jail to show them other possibilites than crime, more education, etc.

But the problems aren't easy to solve. I mean, maybe it would help ex-prisoners to integrate back into society better, if no one was told that they spent time in jail. But then again, would you really want to have to hire people with no idea if they have a prison record or not?

Smaller, more frequent prisons would mean more communities would have prisons near them, and many people don't want that.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

People in the UK already have the right not to disclose some "spent" convictions, ones which were of a certain seriousness and which took place a certain length of time ago. That's fine with me, actually, though in practice it means applicants who've been in prison have big gaps to account for somehow. But, yeah, I really wouldn't want to know if someone I was considering for employment had a conviction. I'd want to know if they were still considered a risk, but otherwise: no.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

But there are plenty of opportunities to compare situations where people have been given community service orders or whatever and people who've been sent to prison for comparable crimes

This would compare the liklihood of criminals committing a crime again. I am talking about deterring people from committing crimes in the first place. Like, I might really, really want to punch out that guy insulting me in the bar, but the liklihood of getting caught and thrown in prison, and the attendant negative associations thrown on me (including making it harder to find a job in the future, etc.) is just too high to be worth it.

Sure, some people will cave in and just punch the guy, but many others will resist because of the deterrence of going to prison.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Cross-society comparisons? I know they're poorly controlled, but punishment regimes are sufficiently different between moderately comparable countries to make it worth at least a casual look.

Also, I suppose, comparing "those who do" with "those who don't" and asking what the factors in the decision were, and controlling for known risk factors (gender, income etc.).