Offenders made to face victims

Youth crime could be halved through the introduction of a new form of police caution where offenders meet their victims face-to-face, according to research out today.

In a pilot scheme by Thames Valley Police, " restorative cautions" proved far more likely to prevent re-offending than conventional cautioning - which usually consists of a "severe dressing-down" by an officer.

Records for 56 young offenders aged between 10 and 17, whose restorative cautions were monitored during 2000, showed 14 per cent were convicted or given further cautions for offences committed in the following year. This was half the rate of re-offending in a previous study of conventional cautioning.

Study co-author Dr Richard Young, of Oxford University's Centre for Criminological Research, said: "Restorative measures are playing an increasing part in the efforts by Youth Offending Teams and other agencies to prevent re-offending.

"While there was considerable room for further improvement, the findings suggest even restorative conferences that were less-well run were a substantial improvement on traditional cautioning.

"But there is no doubt the best results were achieved where police did good preparation, ran the meeting in a structured way, and gave victims, offenders and everyone else who attended a proper opportunity to contribute."

Under restorative cautioning everyone affected by an offence, including relatives of the victim and offender, is invited to participate in a meeting, overseen by trained officers following a script.

Anyone who would normally receive a caution enters the Thames Valley scheme. Most are first-time young offenders caught stealing, shoplifting or taking cars. Where the victim chooses not to meet the offender face-toface-their views are read to the culprit by an officer.

The research, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, assessed the initiative from its start in 1998. In the first three years, 1,915 restorative conferences were held where victims were present. There were a further 12,065 restorative cautions where victims' views were relayed by an officer.

Apologies were usually offered to the victims and were seen as the result of genuine remorse. One in three offenders entered into a formal written agreement with their victim to make some kind of reparation, for instance to repair a smashed window.

Study co-author Dr Carolyn Hoyle said the research suggested restorative justice can have benefits for the victims as well as offenders.

She said: "One victim of a serious assault told us he had thought of the offender as an animal. But the conference made him realise the offender was just a normal person and that helped him to get on with his life. To an impressive degree, Thames Valley Police have engineered a shift away from the idiosyncratic and sometimes stigmatising treatment of offenders under conventional cautioning, to a more consistent system of restorative cautioning, with defined aims and standards."

Andrew Buckingham, a spokesman for Victim Support, welcomed the findings. He said: "This study confirms our own research that restorative justice helps prevent re-offending by showing offenders the impact of their crime on individuals.

"It is not a soft option. Criminals see the misery they cause when they burgle someone's house, they realise they are ruining someone's life and show genuine remorse.

"The fact that the study has targeted young offenders is very good because it nips criminal behaviour in the bud. Hopefully these youngsters will never reoffend."

'Thugs are now my mates'