Restorative Practice
At school, as a Head of Year, Deputy Head and Headteacher, I used Restorative Practice to solve incidents. It is a philosophy which is efficient and highly effective.
You bring together the parties concerned and establish what has happened. This is often achieved through questioning but may require witness statements or further investigation. Once the facts have been established the people involved are confronted with their actions, the consequences on others and guided through what they should have done. Then suitable punishments are ascribed. I always asked both parties what they thought the punishment should be.
This is what I found:
- It was relatively easy to establish what had taken place
- Once confronted with evidence the guilty party invariably admitted their guilt
- Rarely was it one sided – there were mistakes made by all parties to one degree or another
- The punishments selected by the victims were usually lighter than I would have imposed
- The punishments selected by the guilty party were usually harsher than I would have imposed.
- By the end I had established what had gone wrong, who was to blame (and to what degree), and what should be done to make amends.
- Both parties left feeling that justice had been done
- Both parties were usually guilty to an extent
- The punishments fitted the crime
- Both parties accepted the verdict and felt the punishments were appropriate
- There was modelling of what should have happened.
- It was speedy.
- Both parties apologised and made up and could appreciate the impact, physically, emotionally and psychologically, on the other.
- The participants left the room without feeling aggrieved, feeling they had been listened to and justice had been done. Their punishments were an atonement.
I believe the Legal System could adopt a similar process for most, even serious, crimes. For perpetrators to see the effect they were having on real victims and for victims to see and understand real reasons that perpetrators had for committing crimes and for punishments to be applied fairly – it is a win win for me.
It also carries an important message about working democratically and empathetically.
Very true! I thought it worked really well.
This, linked to your previous post, would save us millions if not billions.
Not only that but, in my opinion, it would be fairer and have better outcomes.
Reblogged this on Opher's World and commented:
Restorative Practice is in my opinion the best way of preventing reoffending in most cases.
Upon reading this, I reflected upon the consequences for some guys at my school following some form of similar discourse. Sure, the teaching staff thought in principle that they had diffused a situation and regained control of an out of control situation. Indeed they did…on paper. Paper always gives a good result if you trick around the figures for long enough. It all adds up at the end of the day.
However, the end of the day has further connotations, one’s where there’s no calculations made or negotiations to agree upon. No reconciled agreeable to all parties happy endings.
I remembered the feral mentality of some of these guys at my school. Guys who didn’t think twice about lamping a teacher’s jaw, kicking him down and stomping on him. Guys that didn’t give a fuck who you were or what you were. They’d spit in your face to blind you, then headbut you as they emptied your pockets. Guy who set teacher’s cars on fire in the car park in broad daylight.
If you were ever suspected of snitching, you got the kicking within inches of your life. Sometimes a slashing, too.
I’m sure this programme worked great for the more sedate and non-malignant type of pupils who simply had got involved in normal schoolboy fracas. But it certainly would have been useless and potentially very dangerous for the less feral guy were he involved, too.
Teacher’s have/had a terrible habit of forgetting that life goes on outwith the school gates after 4pm. There may be a bus ride to negotiate. There may be a long walk home. Then there’s the weekend where only the stupidly retarded would venture outside any further than the garage, just in case. Then there’s the agony of expectation of next Monday morning’s journey to school.
I had a couple of friends who unbeknownst to their aggressors, were pretty handy with a bit of boxing and could take and did so, these yobs apart.
Trouble is the yobs had brothers and friends, lots of friends and it ends up as one guy versus 12 yobs. He gets a thorough kicking all because some bozo teacher thought he had intervened and solved a problem. When in fact he had helped start a war.
I once saw a victim’s father walk into a class one afternoon and make a blood bath of a teacher’s face because of something like this.
I don’t think you’ve been near a prison Opher. Some of these really violent guys spend 6 months studying ever move of the screws and their target. They plan and re-plan down to that 15 second open opportunity that they need. The last thing on their minds are any concerns as to the feelings of their victims. They’d have cut your throat before you’d finished the introductory sentence explaining such a programme.
Do you have any weekly magazines your way that describes all the court cases, who, what, where etc? I buy the Glasgow edition, tiltled “The Digger”. £1.25 a week and I really don’t think your wee programme of Restorative Practices would hit the spot. However, a 6″ blade or a bullet always hits the spot. Being left in a ditch or burned out car is optional.
I’m not suggesting that it works in every case and I don’t think it works with extremely damaged gang kids. But I have seen it work and change the mentality of a group of boys some of whom were distinctly into extreme violence.
Having visited prisons, worked with prisoners, having friends who have been in prison, and friends who work in prisons I think I have an idea of their clientele. I’ve known a few murderers in my time.
I know it works – but in the right circumstances.
What I’m remembering here is these kids that should have been able to leave school at 15. However, around then they changed the rules and upped it to 16, so they had to hang in school for another year. This raised the problems. Non-certification boys bored out their minds with no purpose to being there. Some spent half their school day hitting bits of metal in a workshop or out in the grounds digging. They were a nightmare disruption for all concerned. Definitely the downside to Comprehensive type schools where the vast majority behave and study, with a small percentage reeking havoc on everyone else.
Youth knife and rape crime has got so bad that they’ve just opened 2 more courts that deal only with such cases.
For some reason the majority by far are eastern EU immigrants. I think this 3 strikes and your out policy regards knife crime is a joke and these thugs should be sent down upon the first offence.
Yes I remember that well. Raising the leaving age caused a lot of problems. That minority always cause a problem for the others. A lot of work has been carried out to find the best ways of dealing with the disaffected. There have been some effective strategies brought to bear that has substantially reduced the problem. The key is to get them to buy into the system which is hard when the whole family (and sometimes community) ethos is a negative one. I had a great bunch of guys working on it and we were very successful. When I first went to the place (forty odd years ago) it was a cauldron of violence and bullying.
There should be a zero tolerance of knife-crime and rape. It is how it is dealt with that is the key. People are complex and all different. The same treatment doesn’t work for everyone. You have to tailor it.
But they don’t seem too keen on loading them back on the plane to point of origin after the first offence. That might be something of a deterrent. Some come here in order to spend time in jail over the winter.
I can’t understand it. They have the power to do that but are reluctant to use it. It has been the same with most things – including benefits and the NHS. It is stupid. Not only does it cost us a huge amount of money but it riles people so that they end up voting Brexit. Politicians and the police need to get their act together.
Unfortunately the police don’t set the detention tariffs for feral youth knife crime. The legal system as a whole needs a complete overhaul. Whoever thought the time was right to only detain a knife wielding thug upon the third offence?
As for dishing out licenses to shops being able to sell these lethal hunting knives – what’s that about? Maybe I’m unawares, but I’ve yet to see any Elks, Bears and Sharks wandering the streets needing filleted.
The whole legal system needs a serious updating and bringing into the 21st century! The Crown Prosecution are a travesty.
Shops selling knives – it’s ridiculous.