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Violent pupils must face their victims, says ex-police chief
Tim Ross, Education Correspondent01.10.08
Violent and disruptive pupils should be brought face to face with their victims to take responsibility for their actions, a former police chief said today.
Sir Charles Pollard said so-called "restorative justice" techniques have already halved exclusion rates and cut bullying in some of England's toughest schools.
But ministers have failed to "grasp the nettle" and promote the system more widely, according to Sir Charles, the former chief constable of Thames Valley Police.
He was speaking before giving a presentation to independent school headteachers alongside a convicted burglar who gave up crime after hearing how his actions had ruined his victim's life.
Restorative justice brings offenders together with their victims in a meeting chaired by a trained facilitator. The two sides discuss the impact of a crime in what Sir Charles said was often a "very powerful" encounter. The key element of the process was "personal, direct confrontation with the impact you have on other people", Sir Charles said. "The evidence is overwhelming of massive victim satisfaction. They believe this is very helpful to them," he said.
The typical approach to unruly pupils is to throw them out of school. But children excluded from mainstream education are far more likely to turn to drugs or serious crime, he said.
Restorative justice deals effectively with problems that occur while keeping the pupils in school and continuing with their education.
Exclusion rates in schools where the technique has been used have fallen by 45 per cent, alongside a reduction in truancy and bullying, Sir Charles said. But he said ministers had not given the approach - which has been championed by a number of groups - the support that it deserves.
"I am personally very disappointed at the failure to grasp the nettle on something which could have a major impact on behaviour in some of England's toughest schools," he said.
Since leaving Thames Valley Police in 2002, Sir Charles has chaired the Youth Justice Board and is now chairman of Restorative Solutions, a notfor-profit organisation which works with community groups, police and schools. He will set out the case for restorative justice at the annual meeting of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference of leading private schools in Kensington.
Reader views (3)
Despite the above poster's apparent antipathy for Sir Charles, actually RJ has been shown to reduce exclusion et al independently of enforcement and in-school discipline. I would be interested in recent analysis that shows otherwise.
Furthermore Restorative Justice was not tried (past tense) but is spreading amongst police forces and being heralded as a return to common sense policing. Restorative Approaches in Neighbourhoods (RAiN) for example is being used in Leicestershire and proved most popular with officers who have been serving long enough to remember a time before target driven policing and 'Offences brought to Justice'.
Too often the importance of the victim is forgotten in these discussions - and too often the MET see victims as only important in so far as they are witnesses - RJ helps include the people most affected by the crime in finding a solution to it.
As far as 'knowledge of real criminal motivation' goes, Sir Charles was speaking alongside Peter Woolf, a career criminal who turned his life around after an RJ conference - I suspect Peter has a greater insight into such matters than all of us.
And finally Sir Charles' "Hobby horse" was recently shown by gold standard government research to reduce frequency of reoffending by an average of 27% (up to 61%) and save the taxpayer £9 for every £1 spent delivering it (the pilots alone saved over £7million).
I think the gardening can wait for now...
- Chris, London
I concur with the previous readers views. RJ is still being used in TVP and sold as an all purpose panacea for every crime. The real solution is robust Policing and robust sentencing. The Police should not have anything to do with social engineering projects or anything other than the narrow remit of Law enforcement. RJ and other partnership projects needs to be booted into the long grass.
These are my own views and not the views (sadly) of my own force.
- Alastair Adams, Worcester Park, Surrey
Many of us had hoped that when Sir Charles retired, his restorative justice hobby-horse would be pensioned off with him. No such luck. As with so many rapidly promoted chief officers, his knowledge of real criminal motivation was always limited, but his influence and close personal relationship with a former Home Secretary ensured that restorative justice was tried in a number of police forces (notably Thames Valley) for a short time. For the record, the reduction in exclusion, bullying and truancy has nothing whatsoever to do with RJ - recent analysis shows that it has much more to do with enforcement and in-school discipline.
So pleae, Sir Charles, return to your garden.
- Exmetseniorofficer, London
