Mixed feelings about Criminal Justice Review
From The Irish News - 11th December 2001
by Breidge Gadd
Given that the public prosecutor's office is to be given greater powers to divert cases from court and more than ever needs to be open and accountable, this resistance to any form of independent examination of complaints is unacceptable.
Nevertheless, there is much that is positive and forward looking in the provisions in the bill, particularly in the area of juvenile justice (those aged up to 17).
It is a pity that some of the imaginative new orders which will be available to the courts are not also available for those up to 25, as it is those between the ages of 15 and 25 who are responsible for most crime.
The bill proposes a Community Responsibility Order, requiring offenders learn about good citizenship and to be made aware of the impact of crime on victims.
There is also a Reparation Order available for those aged 17 and under requiring offenders to make reparation for the offence (other than direct compensation) to an individual or to the community.
The proposed provision that children under 14, if given a custodial penalty, should be looked after by the care services rather than the justice system is also to be welcomed.
The major disappointment, however, is the critically important area of restorative justice.
The Patten policing model places emphasis on partnership between the community and the police. By implication it also raises the exciting possibility throughout the criminal justice system as a whole, that people anew might be given back the responsibility to work alongside public bodies to prevent crime and to be involved in supervising the offender in the community.
More and more, established criminal justice systems in Europe and beyond are recognising the serious limitations of the adversarial win/lose approach.
The restorative justice approach is essentially a problem-solving model. It places the offender in the context of his/her community, and asks him/her in some way to make good the harm she/he has done to victim, family and the community.
Restorative justice is the process by which the state and the courts place some power and responsibility for helping to solve the problems of crime back at community level where it belongs.
To succeed it requires active community involvement.
However, when we look at the proposals in the bill for restorative justice, outlined in the section Youth Conference Orders we find that the community has been given no part in the process.
Northern Ireland, with community involvement and community infrastructure which is the envy of other countries trying to set up restorative schemes, is to have a legalised, bureaucratic, unimaginative court-based scheme which does allow some selected community members to participate, but only on the say so of the Youth Conference Coordinator.
And who are the Youth Coordinators: people known to and trusted by courts and community perhaps?The proposal in the bill states; The secretary of state must designate persons employed in (a) the civil service of the UK or (b) the civil service on Northern Ireland to be youth conference coordinators Section 53,3A (3) ie - not a court official, not a youth or community expert, but a civil servant and possibly one from outside Northern Ireland who conceivably might be totally ignorant of all aspects of Northern Ireland and its disparate and different structures.
Other than creating jobs for civil servants redundant now that the security threat has significantly reduced, there is no reason to bring the bureaucrats of the state into a frame that should primarily be a compact between the courts and the community. |
