Clause 15 - Rehabilitation activity requirement

Part of Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:00 am on 3 December 2013.

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Photo of Jenny Chapman Jenny Chapman Shadow Minister (Justice) 10:00, 3 December 2013

This has become a bit of a tradition in justice Bills. I think this is the third Bill in a row where we have tried to do this. The Government favour restorative justice and want to see more good quality restorative justice taking place, and we try to nudge them a little further. These are probing amendments: we want to find out what the Minister has in mind about the future use of restorative justice, and about some of the benefits which we feel could be gained from its wider use. We are constantly learning how to use restorative justice more appropriately, and how more victims of crime can benefit from it.

As I say, these are probing amendments which address the issue of restorative justice provision. Amendments 59 and 62 would create a specific restorative justice requirement that could be imposed as part of a community sentence or suspended sentence order. Amendments 60 and 61 would specify that restorative justice activities could be prescribed as part of a rehabilitation activity requirement, alongside accredited programmes and broader reparative activity.

There is welcome cross-party agreement on the merits of restorative justice as part of the rehabilitation agenda. Of particular importance is the high approval rating of restorative justice among the victims who have experienced it, which is getting higher because practitioners are becoming more expert. They are constantly increasing the creative ways in which they are able to engage both perpetrators and victims in the process. It gives victims the opportunity to express the effect on them of an offence, and asks the offender to face up to their victim and hear the effects of their crime.

Once again, I pay particular tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East, who has worked tirelessly to try to widen and improve the offer of restorative justice to victims around the country. I have spoken in many debates in which he has also spoken on this particular issue, and I would say that he is an expert on restorative justice. We want to know what the Government have in mind and whether they will go any further, perhaps not by including this amendment on the face of the Bill but as the provision of community sentences changes and develops over time.

In the Crime and Courts Act 2013 the Government include welcome provisions to allow time to be built into the justice process for pre-sentence restorative justice activities. They intend these activities to be available as part of the rehabilitation activity requirement, under the broader umbrella of reparative activities. These amendments were originally tabled in the other place, and aim to open up the debate about whether more could or should be done to provide for and encourage the use of restorative justice wherever it is appropriate.

As the Government are updating the options available to a court as part of a community or suspended sentence order, the real question is whether it would be beneficial to put restorative justice activities on the face of the 2003 Act, or to encourage higher usage or allow the courts to mandate restorative justice as a requirement in its own right. We re-tabled the amendments to allow the Minister to update the Committee on the Government’s plans to encourage the use and availability of restorative justice, and again to ask about the Government’s thoughts on whether it might be beneficial to update the Criminal Justice Act to include a specific mention of restorative justice activity. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.