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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4078 ..

absence of guidelines does not as far as I can see prevent the application of the conferencing process to particular types of offences.

We know that the court system does not deal well at all with these offences. Victims are often left feeling more victimised or their cases are not brought before the court. So there is a lot to be gained by working on an alternative model, one that also has a chance of addressing the offender, addressing the offender’s behaviour and, hopefully, changing it, and of providing the victim with some sense of healing or closure, of having been heard and of having the abuse publicly taken seriously.

But we have to be sure that the model has been developed thoroughly and at this point in the bill there is not an assurance that that work must be done first. There is also a lot of harm that can be done and we do not want to perpetuate the wrongs of the criminal justice system by opening up the offence, only to find that the system is not prepared to provide support in the ways that the people involved need. There have also been findings that the outcomes for victims are worse where a conference fails.

As we were told in the briefing, the unit will not have the resources to provide therapeutic interventions. That is a danger and a matter of concern with this set up. If we are referring people to treatment programs that do not exist or are not well enough resourced to take in people, we are not doing what is best for our society. We know from various committee reports that there is a lack of programs to deal with sexual offences by young people. We are not working to reduce crime if we do not provide the resources for that. That is why I am disappointed that offender assistance outcomes are not explicitly a part of the objects of this bill. There is not then an explicit obligation in this legislation for the government to resource the kinds of programs that are needed.

The same comments have been made in relation to the exposure drafts for the sentencing bills. These retain an outdated, unhelpful and probably damaging focus on punishment. At a seminar last year held by ACTCOSS in conjunction with the Youth Coalition of the ACT, Professor John Braithwaite described how restorative justice processes have their effect. He said—this is not a direct quote, but notes taken as he spoke—that there is a flip so that the victim is interested in how to resolve the problem. It changes the emotional response of people to the criminal situation. Focus on the problem, rather than the offender, and therefore prevent it happening again. Equal concentration on victims, offenders and the broader community tends to draw out a victim’s sense of forgiveness and solution, leading to a better future for the victims and offenders, particularly young offenders.

He also talked about the values base being empowerment for all participants so that in the police run conferencing at that time the idea was that it was not the police saying what should happen but rather asking for ideas. The government was clear in presenting the bill that when the bill talks about restorative justice it refers to the particular model in this bill and that particular model is exclusively victim focused.

I note that New Zealand paid for some of the programs it ran by selling off juvenile justice facilities that were, apparently, on prime development land, which goes to remind us that if we take restorative justice seriously it has the capacity to reduce recidivism, to reduce the need for prisons, because it has actually reduced the level of harm across the community. That is not achieved by focusing on punishment.

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