pilot

The Restorative Justice Trust is conducting a 50-case restorative justice pilot for 6-months commencing on 3 April 2000 at the Waitakere District Court, New Zealand.

The Restorative Justice Trust has been joined in partnership to conduct the pilot by Methodist Mission Northern, the New Zealand Law Foundation and the Legal Services Board.

The Restorative Justice Trust was incorporated last year to study, educate in and promote best practice restorative justice processes in New Zealand.

1. Father Jim Consedine, a leading advocate for restorative justice. He is the author of “Restorative Justice: Healing the Effects of Crime” (1995), the second edition of which was published in April of last year. He is the national coordinator of the Restorative Justice Network, which joins together community groups around the country offering restorative justice services.

2. Helen Bowen. She has been a criminal lawyer for the past 20 years. She is co-author with Jim Consedine of the book “Restorative Justice – Contemporary Themes & Practice”, published in December, 1998. She has also trained as a mediator and facilitator.

3. Trustee Jim Boyack has been a criminal lawyer for 20 years. He, like Helen, has been a volunteer restorative justice conference facilitator for the past 5 years, and with Helen, is a co-director of Justice Alternatives. Jim has also written on the relationship between restorative conferences and the court.

Helen and Jim B. are co-authors of the New Zealand Restorative Justice Practice Manual (January, 2000).

4. The fourth trustee is Patrick Power, a senior barrister employed by the Department of Public Prosecutions, Sydney. He has just completed his PhD thesis at A.N.U. on comparative restorative justice practice. He was instrumental in promoting and helping draft the Young Offenders Act 1997 (NSW) which instituted restorative justice conferencing for young offenders. He is currently the Chair of the Youth Justice Advisory Committee set up the Minister of Juvenile Justice to liaise with the Director General of Juvenile Justice on the act. He is a consultant to the New South Wales Government on the implementation of restorative justice processes for adults.

The Trust is being supported in the pilot by Restorative Justice Services (Auckland), a restorative justice facilitation group which grew out of Te Oritenga. RJS facilitators have been joined by a new group of trained facilitators.

Helen Marshall, a former probation officer with 20 years court experience, has been appointed pilot administrator. She is based at court to receive referrals.

1. To test practices and procedures outlined in the Restorative Justice Practice Manual.

The New Zealand Law Foundation funded the Trust last year to produce a restorative justice practice manual. The manual is a compendium of restorative justice practices in New Zealand over the past few years, informed by the authors’ research into similar restorative justice programmes in Australia, the United States and Great Britain. It provides a guide to restorative justice practitioners and administrators as to present practice in respect of organising and conducting restorative justice conferences. The 50-case pilot will enable the authors, Helen Bowen and Jim Boyack, who are also the pilot project managers, to intensively scrutinise practices and procedures proposed in the manual, and to improve them as necessary.

2. To demonstrate a communitarian model of restorative justice service delivery.

3. To negotiate and model relationships between a restorative justice provider and the various stakeholders in the criminal justice system.

The pilot administrators believe that restorative justice will not be taken up by the criminal justice system unless there is transparent co-operation with, and input from, the various parties involved in court processes.

Identified stakeholders with whom consultation is taking place in and around the Waitakere Court include the Court Manager and the criminal court team, the Presiding Judge, visiting judges, the Police, Community Corrections, Victim Support, Victim Court’s Advisors, the WAVES domestic violence advisor, Te Whanau Awhina (which administers the community diversion panel at Waitakere), lawyers, friends of court and community agencies and organisations which can provide post-sentence support for victims and offenders. The hope of the pilot administrators is that protocols will be agreed with each of these groups in terms which record a working relationship. Such model protocols will suggest a way forward for other restorative justice programmes around the country.

The pilot managers have been part of the consultative group to the Department for Courts-driven proposal for a judge’s restorative justice pilot. The proposed Restorative Justice Trust pilot and the judge’s pilot have been aligned to enable the experience of this private pilot to inform the proposed government initiative. The managers will work in tandem with court’s independent evaluators.

Self-evaluation through intensive debriefing will inform amendment of pilot practices and procedures, with the aim of having a final draft of the Restorative Justice Practice Manual at the conclusion of the pilot for the use of other community groups starting up or already under way around New Zealand.

Input in respect of making processes more user-friendly, as well as more effective, will come from victims, offenders and others attending the conference who will be asked to provide feedback via questionnaires to be completed after the conference.

Pilot Methodology

The possibility of holding a restorative justice conference will arise only after a Summary of Facts has been agreed between the offender’s lawyer and the police, a plea of guilty has been entered and the judge has adjourned the case pursuant to Section 14 of the Criminal Justice Act for the restorative justice provider to investigate, and if appropriate, to convene and report on a restorative justice conference. Such investigation will be carried out by a trained restorative justice facilitator team comprising a senior, experienced facilitator and two recently trained co-facilitators. They will meet first with the offender and important others in the offender’s life, and then with the victim, and those supporting the victim, to satisfy themselves that each may constructively, voluntarily and safely attend a conference.

A conference report will be prepared for consideration by the judge at sentence. The judge may also call for a probation officer’s report, which, together with victim impact statements or emotional harm or reparation reports, would be taken into account by the judge at sentence.

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