30 April 2008
Clifford Chance, Canary Wharf, London
Jack Straw has made a speech on the role of restorative justice on the tenth anniversary of the Restorative Justice Consortium.
The Right Honourable Jack Straw MP, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice:
Good evening.
It is a great pleasure to with you tonight to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the Restorative Justice Consortium.
Sometimes I find it difficult to believe that it was a decade ago, when as Home Secretary I introduced restorative justice into the youth system in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act. However, the frankly shambolic state of youth justice in the late 90s, may be beyond the memory of some of you here.
So slow and inefficient was the system that often months would elapse between offence and sentence, during which time any association between the two would be lost. In other words, for many young people there was little appreciation that their actions had consequences.
I must here pay tribute to Lord Warner, who was the very first chair of the Youth Justice Board, created as part of wholesale and much-needed reform of the youth justice system, and indeed in our entire approach to youth justice. Norman was one of the principal architects of youth justice reform. Under his stewardship, and through the 1998 Act, restorative justice was put on a statutory footing, and contributed to one of the critical Youth Justice Board objectives of, and I quote:
'Confronting young offenders with the consequences of their actions, for themselves and their family, their victims and the community and helping them to develop a sense of personal responsibility.'
Your other host for this evening, Sir Charles Pollard, also deserves the plaudits, for it was he who opened my eyes to the benefits of restorative justice through his work at Thames Valley Police. Together, Norman and Charles were true pioneers for a more enlightened and effective approach to dealing with young offenders, an approach which is now common practice across many parts of the country.
So, ten years on there is a happy symmetry that I am back in the area where I first started in government, sharing a platform with the same two men.
What is different today, is that restorative justice is gradually finding a place in dealing with adult offending, whilst its use is now widespread in the youth justice system, and becoming yet more so.
For example, we are currently legislating to introduce the Youth Conditional Caution for under 18s which can make use of restorative justice and reparation as part of the terms.
Reparation will also be a facet of the new Youth Rehabilitation Order which forms part of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, currently before Parliament. This will give the courts flexibility to tailor disposals to individual circumstances, including where reparation to the community or individual is warranted.
We announced in the Children's Plan last December that we will be piloting a new out-of-court disposal that will sit below reprimands and final warnings. This is the Youth Restorative Disposal, whereby the police can deal with low level offences there and then, by allowing the young person to make amends at the scene. Clearly this is a measure which needs to be used appropriately, and can only be issued once, but it could become a useful means by which to deal with petty offences, whilst saving valuable police and court time.
I make two caveats to my next remarks. One is that we are currently in a period known as purdah, which in essence means that in the immediate weeks preceding an election, I cannot make new commitments on behalf of the government. And secondly and perhaps more frustratingly for many assembled here, nor am I in a position to comment on the fourth research report which, I appreciate, is eagerly awaited, and long overdue.
But subject to that, I want to concentrate this evening on what I see as the central issue in respect of the future for restorative justice, the balance between its efficacy at reducing reoffending and the benefit it provides for victims of crime.
As you know, in 2001 we began a substantial evaluation of every aspect of restorative justice so that we could draw informed conclusions about its further use. Three of the four research reports have now been published, covering the setting up of the pilots, the delivery of the process and satisfaction with the process. But it is the fourth and final instalment which looks at the impact of restorative justice on reducing reoffending which is outstanding.
I know the report is behind schedule, and I am well aware how frustrating that has been for anyone who takes an interest in this area. I am sorry it has taken so long.
But I should reassure you that there is nothing sinister behind the delay. I want to see it too. We recognise this report is incredibly important in helping inform the direction the restorative justice strategy will take and so we want to get it right and not release the document until we are confident it is accurate. We have invested a lot of time and money into this project and so don't want to cut corners right at the end. The sheer size of the study and the complexity of the techniques (new statistical measures of frequency and severity) mean that the report will be an authoritative study - but it has also meant it has taken longer than we expected both to complete and to get peer-reviewed. I have been told we are just about there and that it will be published by the end of June.
I cannot predict the outcomes of the final research in relation to impacts on reoffending, as I haven't seen it. But there is an element to restorative justice which I am clear should carry considerable weight in our considerations, as it always has, for it is fundamental to the principles of restorative justice. And that is the importance to victims of crime feeling that justice is serving them. That famous dictum that 'justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done', is given clear expression through restorative justice.
Restorative justice gives victims the chance to have a greater voice in the system, it obliges offenders to face up to the impact of their actions and provides the opportunity for offenders to pay back to the community for their behaviour.
It is an approach which has always instinctively felt like a positive approach. It offers victims, who in previous periods were marginalised within the mainstream criminal justice process, the opportunity to explain how crime has affected their lives. And makes offenders - too often shielded by the process - face up to the harm they have caused. Offenders can commit to undertaking actions to make amends. And victims can better understand why it happened and may even feel able to forgive the offender.
Restorative justice is not some sort of soft option. Indeed making people face up to what they have done can often ask a great deal of the offender, particularly when used alongside punitive sanctions.
The burgeoning evidence base now consistently shows very positive outcomes for victims; typically at least three-quarters of victims who choose to take part in restorative justice were satisfied with the process, and would recommend it. Overall, those victims who have gone through a restorative process feel much more satisfied with the criminal justice system as a result.
Restorative Justice - timebank
Given the proven benefits of restorative justice in increasing confidence in the justice system I am particularly interested in how reparation can work as part of custodial as well as non-custodial sentences.
HMP Gloucester, for instance, has been running a scheme whereby the hours of prison work clocked up contribute to a community-wide 'timebank'. This 'timebank' is essentially a store of pledged hours of volunteering. In this way the work done in prison - for example, at Gloucester this is repairing bicycles to be sent to developing countries - can benefit the local community. An hour's work from a prisoner on the inside could mean a lift to the shops for an elderly person on the outside, or a hospital visit or time spent by volunteers to clean up the local park. It is a contract between volunteers on the outside and prisoners on the inside.
What I am particularly drawn to with this scheme is the potential for prisoners to make direct reparation to the victim and the community. This is easily done as part of a community punishment, but less so when the sentence is custodial.
So in March I asked officials in my department to look at ways we can develop these timebank schemes and whether they can be extended so that work, skills and training accessed in prison translates into volunteering-time that can be accessed directly by victims. Through projects like that at HMP Gloucester the prison becomes an active part of the community, constructive for the offender and for the community they have wronged.
Reoffending
This positive impact on victims is something I think we can all agree on. The area where perhaps it gets harder to reach consensus is on restorative justice's impact on reoffending. There have been numerous studies - and I say this with respect to the various academics who are here this evening - no clearcut answers. The final report due out in June should provide a more definitive answer. Given previous reports I will be surprised, albeit pleasantly, if it shows evidence of a statistically significant difference in reconviction rates between offenders who participate in restorative justice and those who do not.
There are numerous case studies and anecdotal evidence of where it does work. But there are also cases where it does. As a government we have to make sure we put our efforts and resources into the right things and so we have to be convinced. That said, even if restorative justice is relatively neutral in terms of its impact on reoffending, if it benefits victims and is cost-neutral, and that is an important point, then I believe there is a strong case to extend it.
Conclusion
Neither Charles, Norman, I, nor anyone else I know has ever believed that restorative justice was the silver bullet to solve all our law and order issues. But I am aware it can and should have an important place.
However, the impact on reoffending is yet to be definitively proved and there is nothing as yet in the existing research which suggests that any particular type of offence or offender is best suited to a restorative justice approach. So all of us committed to the principle have to work hard to improve its application and better identify where it can be targeted.
The fourth report will shortly be published, and I look forward to the continuing debate which will then ensue.
Thank you.