Project that gives victims justice looks to grow
A PIONEERING anti-crime project which brings culprits and victims face-to-face wants to expand after a decade of success.
The “restorative justice” scheme run by community safety group Sacro in Edinburgh and Midlothian, helps victims and accused come together to resolve low-level cases without having to go to court.
The two sides can then agree on an apology, financial reparation or some other way of making amends for the incident.
The project, which only takes cases involving people over 16, has dealt with more than 2500 referrals from the procurator fiscal service in the past ten years.
It claims a 100 per cent success rate for its face-to-face meetings and 88 per cent for cases involving “shuttle dialogue”, where a volunteer acts as a go-between.
Niall Kearney, Sacro’s restorative justice development officer, said the scheme gave a voice to the victim, reduced reoffending and increased confidence in the justice system. He said: “It’s very often one-off incidents people are embarrassed about and they want to put matters right.
“There was one case where there was a brawl in a pub and a man had to be off work for a week. The person responsible for the assault paid him a week’s wages plus something extra.
“In another case, a shop window had been broken. We got both parties together and the man who broke it agreed to clean the new window for six weeks.
“Someone broke a barrier in a car park. He could not afford to replace it but we got the parties to the point where he paid in kind by working for a weekend in the garage.” But Mr Kearney said the project was handling only a fraction of the cases that were eligible for referral.
He said: “We would like to expand so that every case that meets the criteria would be referred.” For a case to be considered for referral, there must be an identifiable victim.
It must be a low-level crime, both parties must live in Edinburgh or Midlothian, and it must be judged the project’s intervention would bring a benefit. Mr Kearney said: “In Edinburgh, the fiscal’s office receives about 2000 reports a month.
“But we have an agreement to deal with less than one per cent of them, whereas probably about half the cases meet the criteria.”
The project provides the procurator fiscal with an alternative to court prosecution, freeing up court time and leaving greater resources to deal with serious crime and criminals who are a danger to the public.
Mr Kearney said the scheme, launched in 1997, had proved an undoubted success. “The fiscals are happy with it and, more importantly, the victims are happy with it,” he said.
“If it goes to court, the victims are only witnesses to decision-making by the sheriff. Our service directly involves the victims.”
A Scottish Executive spokesman said restorative justice had a role to play within the criminal justice system, adding that future funding decisions would be informed by the strategic plans to be drawn up by the new local criminal justice authorities in September.
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