Restorative Justice

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I am not a member of the Justice Committee, but I thank its members for raising the issue of restorative justice and for calling for more support for it.

I am a long-standing prison volunteer, although in a very modest way, so I know about the benefits of restorative justice programmes from offenders and former offenders I have talked to. Consequently, I endorse the calls that we have heard today for greater support to be given to RJ programmes.

If Members will allow me, I will add to the debate the words of an offender who is still serving a sentence. I talked to him on Christmas day and he has given me permission to tell colleagues about his experience of the RJ course. He said to me on Christmas day, “People here think they’re here just out of bad luck, but considering the consequences of your action can make you think.” He went on to say, “I was really angry, but the RJ course gave me an opportunity to take responsibility for my actions”.

I asked this offender to write to me and he wrote a very long and thoughtful letter; he must have spent a lot of Christmas day writing it, and I thank him for it. He wrote that the RJ course he completed, which was the Sycamore Tree course, was a six-week course for 20 offenders that is staffed by volunteers who give up one afternoon weekly over that six-week period to come into the prison. The ratio of volunteers to offenders is 1:1.

I have attended part of that course myself, particularly the sixth week, when offenders summarise what they have learned and speak about the changes within themselves that have occurred, and it is very moving and quite profound. The young man wrote about

“the stand-out watershed moment when a victim of crime comes in to discuss her/his situation. The power of this…conversation cannot be over-emphasised. Our case dealt with ‘Lyn’”—

I do not think that is her real name, because he puts it in inverted commas—

“who recounted the tale of how her son was murdered in Liverpool. This tale struck a chord with all in the room. The first-hand experience and a media presentation of holiday photos and photos from this young man’s life rammed home the message of the consequences of crime. The subsequent letters to Lyn from prisoners is a testament to the lasting power of her presentation. All prisoners should be exposed to such raw emotion.”

The young man said that it was such a positive tool for him and others.

The young man’s perspective on restorative justice was that

“it is the mind of the offender we are seeking to change…Many prisoners believe they are only in prison due to bad luck.”

In other words, “I got caught and many others do not.” He said that he was really angry before he did the course, but that it was a way for him to take responsibility for his actions. Early in his letter he says that prisoners

“must accept their own culpability. This is the first step in an RJ approach.”

I remember one former offender who was a burglar. He used to burgle houses regularly in the middle of the night. He would go home and by 5 am he was fast asleep, never having a thought about the householder he had burgled. He never once thought about them as a victim.

The young man who wrote to me said that he had been “cynical” about the approach taken in the RJ course, particularly because it was somewhat repetitive and a little childish at times. He said there were

“sketches of a burglar saying, ‘She deserved to be burgled as she left the window open’”,

but, as he said,

“chaps really do think like that.”

By exposing them to their faulty thinking, they see that their actions are wrong. Powerfully, he said:

“The scales falling from my eyes with this method allowed me to release the anger that was dwelling in me.”

In another perceptive comment, the young man said,

“RJ allows the offender to recognise their culpability, accept their actions are directly responsible for their circumstances and realise their family are victims of their incarceration…individuals, especially young men, need to be supported…to stop the cycle of shame and rejection”.

He said that through an RJ discussion, the cycle and sense of hostility can be stopped and

“remorse and forgiveness comes into play.”

Profoundly, he said:

“The past cannot be changed, but correct actions in the future can atone for incorrect actions of the past.”

In the letter, he gave a quote—I think it is someone else’s words, but clearly they made great sense to him—which was that the RJ process could

“lift the fog of misunderstanding, intolerance and recrimination that can entirely obscure the offender and victim, but with an RJ meeting a richer perspective may be seen and in time, may even draw them closer.”

In other words, he said that such meetings can change both sides, as the one with “Lyn” obviously did for him.

The young man said that the RJ approach clearly helps to stop reoffending, but that to be as effective as possible, it needs to be linked with other forms of support, whether that is education, drug rehabilitation, employment, training, family contact and what he calls “engaging in the community”. He described the example of members of the Hallé orchestra, who come into the prison I volunteer in and help young people learn instruments. Indeed, on that Christmas day morning, one of the young men gave us a remarkable performance of six different tunes, including Christmas carols, on a brass instrument that he had been learning with the Hallé for only 20 weeks. The young man who wrote to me said that contact like that can

“act as a lifeline to save them from being drowned by reoffending.”

He very much sees RJ as effective, but said that it must sit with other forms of constructive activity. Finally, he said:

“The first step in getting society to change its opinion of prisoners is in getting prisoners to change their opinion of themselves.”