Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

This report presents the results of a 15-month study of the effectiveness of restorative justice schemes conducted between July 1999 and November 2000. The principal fieldwork was undertaken between December 1999 and June 2000 in seven restorative justice schemes across England, two of them dealing principally with adult offenders and the other five with juveniles.

The research was commissioned under the Crime Reduction Programme (CRP), a major government-funded initiative aimed at discovering ‘what works’ in reducing crime and reoffending. The CRP is also concerned to ensure that reductions are delivered efficiently, so a further focus of attention was upon cost-effectiveness in the achievement of the outputs, impacts and outcomes of the schemes examined.

The aims of the research were

• to identify which elements, or which combination of elements, in restorative justice schemes are most effective in reducing crime and at what cost

• to provide recommendations on the content of, and best practice for, schemes to be mainstreamed.

Conclusions

• The schemes evaluated in this research were diverse in their understandings of the notion of ‘restorative justice’, their degree of focus on victims and offenders, and their implementation of the interventions which they undertook. The schemes were also fragile, being vulnerable to funding cuts, and were often dependent on work ‘beyond the call of duty’ by small numbers of exceptionally committed individuals.

• Whatever its precise form, ‘restorative justice’ is a labour-intensive and time-consuming activity, beset by communication problems and delays. Particularly where direct mediation is contemplated, it can involve weeks of preparatory and exploratory work, and, even then, many cases do not reach the desired conclusion. This situation raises some doubts about the future potential of mediation as a mainstream service capable of ‘processing’ large numbers of cases within (or outside) the criminal justice system.

• The offenders interviewed were generally more content with the intervention in their case than were victims. They appeared to understand the purpose of the intervention and several commented that they welcomed the chance to say sorry. Most had found the experience of meeting their victims embarrassing or upsetting, and in a small number of cases threatening. While the sample was not large enough for full confidence in the results, there were encouraging indications from the ‘before and after’ scores of the 28 juvenile offenders who completed CRIMEPICS II (an instrument to measure changes in offenders' attitudes to crime and victims). These showed substantial improvements in attitudes towards victims and towards offending in general.

• The second principal aim of the research was to provide recommendations on the content of and best practice for schemes to be mainstreamed. The conclusions reached were that schemes could benefit from clearer, more systematic, and more developed understandings of a number of key areas of their design and delivery, namely

• aims, organisation, staffing and training

• referral criteria

• victim and offender protocols

• interventions

• closure, follow up and evaluation.

To link to the full report click here. PDF (532 Kb)

Related Links

An International Review of Restorative Justice

Opportunities for Restorative Justice Schemes

Crime Reduction Sentencing

Restorative Justice