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Nick Clegg announces plans for restorative justice in response to the riots
On Tuesday 16 August Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg anounced plans for a "riot payback scheme", which would see people convicted of looting or violence in last week's disturbances being made to do community service or take part in restorative justice programmes in the areas where crimes were committed. He said that people convicted of crimes last week should have to "look their victims in the eye". Watch the Deputy Prime Minister's speech here
Lizzie Nelson, RJC Director said "In what we saw last week, the rioters clearly had no thought for the impact on peoples' homes and businesses and on their local communities. Restorative justice will give those victims a say, a chance to tell the offenders the real impact of their crime. The rioters need to understand this wasn't just 'showing the police' but harming huge numbers of innocent people in their own communities.Restorative justice means accountability, and the chance for offenders to payback to the individual victims and communities they've harmed."
The Ministry of Justice has asked the probation service to instigate the schemes in the cities where the riots took place. Offenders will take part in activities to help repair the damage done or to face their victims and apologise through participation in restorative justice.
The deputy PM told a press conference in London: "I want offenders to be punished – and to change their ways. Victims of crime are only truly protected if punishment leads to criminals not committing crime again. Criminals must be punished and then made to change their ways.
"That's why those people who behaved so despicably last week should have to look their victims in the eye. They should have to see for themselves the consequences of their actions and they should be put to work cleaning up the damage and destruction they have caused so they don't do it again."
For more comment on this story see Mary Riddell's article in the Telegraph
.