Page 134 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2016
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As we know, the caution was heard, as was the positive encouragement to continue. I note that perhaps the ACT could have moved a little faster on rolling out conference approaches to new offences and offender groups in recent years, but I respect Minister Corbell’s longstanding commitment to further implementation of restorative justice approaches.
The ACT continues to consider evidence-based justice programs, which sits well with me as the ACT Greens minister for justice with responsibility for corrections. This is a fertile city in which to explore these complex issues, with a one-government philosophy, our strong university sector and national institutions, and our collaborative community sector. When I sought feedback regarding the rapidly increasing prison populations while holding roundtables in 2013, and then again in 2014, I was overwhelmed by the attendance of every possible stakeholder who had a sincere interest in reducing offending and reoffending and improving community safety. I am not sure that I would have had such buy-in in other jurisdictions.
Restorative justice practices have broader implications than just the criminal justice system, however. I will let others more qualified seek to define this approach in other areas, but I will say that I see restorative processes as bringing people together to repair harm when relationships are damaged by the specific actions of one or more people. They also increase an individual’s accountability for repairing harm to others.
As I say, restorative justice has a broad appeal to other sections of justice, government and community relations. In my own portfolios, I hear not just of conference impacts on offenders who may be clients of ACT Corrective Services but also impacts in education. Restorative practices in schools are efforts that build, maintain and restore communities around inclusive networks of positive relationships.
The ACT government, in its response to the Schools for all report of the expert panel on students with complex needs and challenging behaviours, accepted recommendation 9.1 from the expert panel’s report, which recommends that school-wide positive behaviour support is implemented in schools. Positive behaviour support will be implemented in all ACT public schools from 2016. The education directorate is currently exploring how restorative practices can be integrated into this approach.
ACT schools are working towards adopting restorative practices in line with the national safe schools framework. The nine elements of the national safe schools framework that we can use restorative justice type thinking to implement include restorative practices that allow school leaders to demonstrate their leadership commitment to a safe school through providing their staff with a proven and practical way to build, maintain and restore communities around inclusive networks of positive relationships.
Restorative practices can be used to assist in the creation of a supportive and connected school culture. They do this through providing an opportunity for staff to model and promote explicit pro-social values and expectations for behaviour. This is achieved through processes including circle time and conferences.
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