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Centre for Social Justice calls for restorative justice to change the heart of youth justice

Influential think tank, The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), is calling for the use of restorative justice practices to be increased inside and outside the youth justice system. In their new report, Rules of Engagement: changing the heart of youth justice, the CSJ recommends referral orders are reformed into a ‘robust and restorative disposal’ based on the restorative conferencing model used in Northern Ireland with outcome agreements being ratified by sentencers to increase their confidence in restorative interventions.

The report also calls for restorative practices to be ‘expanded and embedded’ in the juvenille secure estate, for the police to be encouraged to use restorative disposals by counting them as sanction-detections, for restorative justice to be increasingly used in response to anti-social behaviour and for restorative approaches to be promoted in secondary schools and children’s homes.

The report recommends that that the minimum age of criminal responsibility to be raised to twelve, with restorative conferencing to be among the responses used to hold children under twelve who commit crime to account. 

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16th Jan 2012 | Centre for Social Justice

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