Speech to Te waka no nga hau e wha – Restorative Justice hui; Onehunga Community House, Auckland; Friday 23 November 2001; 11.00am.

Mihi

E nga rangatira me nga iwi,
Te iti, te rahi, te katoa
Tena koutou

E nga mate huhua
Moe wairua, moe marie nui
Otia te po, nau mai te ao

Kua huihui mai tatou
Hei whakawhitiwhiti korero
hei whakawhitiwhiti whakaaro
e paa ana ki tenei kaupapa, ara, Restorative Justice

E te roopu te waka no nga hau e wha,
Tena koutou!

Introduction

Thank you for inviting me along today to discuss the court-referred restorative justice project.

It is a great pleasure to be able to meet with a group such as yourselves who are directly involved in working in your community.

The justice debate has focused almost obsessively on who is tough and who is soft on crime.

The question we should ask is 'what works?'

Restorative Justice is literally a system that seeks to restore justice – to the victim, the victim's family, and even the local community where the victim lives.

It is not an alternative to prison for serious offences that automatically carry a prison sentence (as some reports have claimed).

It offers an opportunity to target re-offending in a far more effective way than is sometimes possible within the current criminal justice system.

Where the Criminal Justice System Fails

Our re-conviction rates are far too high – some of the highest in the world. Up to 80% of prison inmates re-offend within 24 months. That is an appalling figure.

Maori are over-represented in the criminal justice system generally, and in prisons.

For more than nine years sentences have increased for more and more offences.

And yet since 1990 violent crime is up by 90%.

The biggest failure of the present justice system is that it has created too many victims.

Fear of crime in the community creates victims too.

The present system has failed to respond to the needs of victims, and failed to make our communities feel safe.

Restorative justice

Restorative justice is not new. Various forms have been practised by different cultures over the ages.

Maori have recognised restorative justice principles for hundreds of years. Traditionally the marae was a place where all parties affected by an offence could be heard, helping to heal the victim, whanau and offenders. Some of these traditional principles have more recently been incorporated into western justice systems.

In New Zealand several kinds of community-based restorative justice initiatives are already in place and some cases are currently sentenced in the light of outcomes from victim/offender meetings.

Existing processes include community panels that can recommend diversion of minor adult offenders out of the court system, and voluntary requests for facilitated meetings between adult victims and offenders at any stage, including during imprisonment.

A number of marae, including Hoani Waititi marae in West Auckland, have programmes aimed at reintegrating offenders into their community.

The statutorily imposed family group conferences have been a feature of the youth justice system for some time.

The court-referred restorative justice pilot is a major addition to the range of restorative justice processes available. Evaluation of the pilot will help us to answer the question ‘what works?’

The pilot is located in three court areas – the Auckland and Waitakere District Courts, the Hamilton District Court and the Dunedin District Court.

Court referred restorative justice is an addition to, not a substitute for the range of restorative justice services already available, and has drawn on the expertise of existing service providers and community groups.

Auckland / Waitakere

Most of you will be aware of the groundbreaking work that was carried out in restorative justice here in Auckland prior to the introduction of the Courts’ pilot.

The Restorative Justice Trust at Waitakere and Pact in Auckland have been leaders in New Zealand in providing restorative justice conferences, and have contributed enormously to the growth in understanding of restorative justice processes in this country.

We have been fortunate in having this foundation of community commitment and co-operation upon which to build the pilot project.

The development of new restorative justice provider groups and particularly Maori providers offers an opportunity to develop an alternative for offenders and victims that recognises the needs and dignity of both and can be provided in a way that is meaningful and culturally appropriate.

We will work hard to ensure the spirit of partnership that has developed so far between the courts, the community groups that provide restorative justice, and the other agencies such as Police and Corrections, will continue.

The volume of cases dealt with at Waitakere and Auckland courts is high enough to allow a significant number of cases to be referred to restorative justice conferences – and this is important so that the evaluation can provide a clear picture of the results of the pilot.

In the current financial year (until June 2002) the project hopes to have 900 cases referred by judges for investigation of restorative justice across the four pilot courts. We expect the number of referrals to increase year by year.

I recognise that some of you here today are those who, out of a concern for and commitment to your communities, have been active in establishing restorative justice processes in this area, and I commend you for that.

I also recognise that some of you have completed the training offered by the Department for Courts under the pilot, and I commend you for that too.

The training of 120 new facilitators under the pilot will also bring new skills and understanding into this developing area.

What is the Pilot About?

The focus of the pilot is on cases of more serious offending - excluding family violence cases - which require close oversight from the Court and cannot be diverted from the court.

This is an area that has largely been excluded from existing restorative justice initiatives.

The pilot trials restorative justice with adult, relatively serious offenders, because the greatest potential benefit can be found in providing resolution for the victims of more serious offences, and in providing better alternatives for more serious offenders and reducing re-offending.

There are positive benefits for victims and community from working together to heal and deal with the effects of crime. This has the potential to make a significant contribution to building stable communities and reducing fear of crime and is perhaps the most important outcome for individuals and the community as a whole.

In the Court-referred pilot, cases will be able to be referred by Judges following a guilty plea, but conferences will not go ahead without the agreement and participation of both the victim and offender.

The pilot is not simply an extension of the Youth Justice system, which would not be appropriate for adult relatively serious offenders. There are also some lessons to be learnt from our decade of experience with conferencing in Youth Justice.

Restorative justice places victims at the centre of the process.

A principal objective is to enable victims to participate in the criminal justice system - by confronting the offender, seeking recognition and reparation for the harm, understanding the events that occurred, and contributing to a process that may increase the chances of changing the offending behaviour.

This will enable victims to play a more informed and useful role in criminal justice processes, and may also contribute to their recovery from the impact of the offence on their lives.

Participation is voluntary, victims and offenders are asked if they wish to participate in restorative justice processes.

The pilot will enable the sentencing judge to take into account the findings of the conference relating to the harm caused to victims and the future reintegration of offenders in the community.

Putting an offender face to face with their victim in a controlled environment so they can see and hear the hurt they’ve caused, is a more effective wake up call than just putting an offender in the dock to glare across the courtroom.

Both victims and offenders will be encouraged to have support people and whanau with them at the conference. The Restorative Justice Coordinators from the Department for Courts are working closely with victim support groups in this regard.

Maintaining an appropriate balance between victim and offenders’ rights under restorative justice processes is one of the issues being tested in the pilot.

It is important to note that the existing sentencing principles are not changed by the introduction of court referred restorative justice conferencing, and sentences are expected to remain within the current range for the offence.

Since the focus of the pilot is on relatively serious offending, this means that a high proportion of the offenders will still attract a custodial sentence in the normal way.

The restorative justice conference report provides judges with additional information to draw upon in sentencing, but Judges will continue to sentence in open court within the framework of the Criminal Justice Act 1985.

Trained Facilitators

As those of you who have been through the training for the court-referred restorative justice project will know already - the selection and training process was rigorous, and the requirements for facilitator providers to be involved in the pilot have also set high standards that will provide protection for all the parties to conferences.

All of these areas – the training, and the processes for approval and contracting with the Department for Courts - will evolve as the pilot develops. The Liaison Group and the courts’ project team welcome your contribution to this development.

Evaluation

Government needs robust information on which to base future decisions and planning in respect of restorative justice initiatives. This will complement the evaluation reports on two adult diversion pilots published in May 1999 and feedback from the Safer Community Council sponsored projects.

Victoria Link – the Criminology Unit of Victoria University – have been contracted to carry out an in depth evaluation of the pilot. The three main evaluation questions are whether the pilot results in:

¨Increased resolution of the effects of crime for victims who participate in restorative justice conferences;

¨Increased victim satisfaction with the criminal justice process;

¨Reduced rate of re-offending by offenders referred to restorative justice conferences – as compared with those dealt with through the normal criminal justice processes.

The evaluators will begin data collection for this evaluation in February next year, and the final evaluation report will be available at the end of 2004. They will concentrate on interviewing the people who have taken part in restorative justice conferences, as well as statistical analysis of offending outcomes.

Community partnership

The Department has established liaison groups in each area to provide an ongoing opportunity for community groups and agencies to be involved in implementation of the scheme. The Auckland Restorative Justice Coordinators – Islay Brown and Garry Summers – are available and interested in ensuring that community groups and agencies can be fully informed and involved in the pilot.

I am privileged to Chair the National Liaison Committee for the pilot that includes representatives from Police, Community Probation, the Ministry of Justice, the Law Society, the District Court Judiciary and Victim Support – together with representatives of the Maori community and Pacific peoples community, and restorative justice providers.

Representation on this group will be expanded next year to include further representatives of providers under the court-referred pilot.

That committee is interested not just in the outcomes of the pilot, and what it tells us about the impact of the introduction of the restorative justice initiative, but also in your concerns as providers of services in the community – and as facilitators of restorative justice processes.

You, here today, are the very people who are integral to the success of this initiative.

I know that some of you represent groups who are dedicated to improving the outcomes for victims of crime and to breaking the cycle of criminal offending. I applaud your commitment to the people of your community.

Conclusion

The pilot of court-referred restorative justice is a bold initiative.

Participation is voluntary, so we don’t know how many victims and offenders will agree to participate and we don’t know what the outcomes will be.

But we do know that the present criminal justice system fails victims and often has little effect on offending behaviour.

We do know that restorative justice offers an alternative way forward, and I am eager to see the pilot prove that restorative justice is the answer.

Na reira e te iwi,
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa.
Pai Marire!

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