The Youth Offending Team has a duty to contact victims and ask them whether or not they want to be involved in direct or indirect restorative interventions.

Restorative Justice

gives victims the chance to tell offenders about the real impact of their crime, to get answers to their questions and to receive an apology. It gives the offenders the chance to understand the real impact of what they have done and to do something to repair the harm. Restorative Justice holds offenders to account for what they have done, personally and directly, and helps victims to get on with their lives.

Restorative Justice can provide victims with:

• An opportunity to explain the impact of the crime
• An acknowledgement of the harm caused
• A chance to ask questions.
• Some control and choice
• Peace of mind about the future
• Apology/reparation/recompense

Restorative Justice can give the offenders:

• The opportunity to explain what happened.
• The opportunity to try to put right any harm caused.
• Some self-esteem.
• Re-integration into the community.

Direct

Direct reparation involves face-to-face contact between the victim and offender through:

• Restorative or family group conferences
• Mediation and/or
• Face-to-face contact at youth offender panels.

Direct restorative processes are deigned to repair the harm caused by a young person’s offending behaviour. In a face-to-face contact, both victim and the offender should share from their perspective their account of what happened and in the case of the offender, what led up to the offence, how this made them both feel, who else was affected, and what they think should happen now. The victim can also specify that the offender carry out a direct task that benefits them i.e. repairing a wall which was damaged by the offender.

Indirect

An indirect restorative justice process is defined as indirect communication with consent between victim and offender without a face-to-face meeting. This includes indirect representation of a victim’s views, including responses to the victim’s questions, which can be relayed verbally – or by letter, recorded video, DVD, or other method – via a restorative process. It also includes providing victims with information, reparation and/or apologies following the restorative process.

Community reparation

Community reparation work forms part of every Court Order but is not a restorative process unless it is the outcome of the direct or indirect processes. Reparation (unpaid work) takes place in the community, e.g. removing graffiti, painting and decorating, gardening work etc. A member of the Youth Offending Team supervises on a one-to-one basis all of the activities carried out by the young people. Each reparation session last approximately 2 hours or more and includes weekend working.