My Lords, I support this amendment. I apologise for not speaking on the subject earlier. The Bill is far too complicated for me as a whole. I saw this in the paperwork today and, surprisingly, I am here so I thought that I ought to say something.
I was on the first Northern Ireland Policing Board. One of the subjects that came up to us was restorative justice as it was being practised in Northern Ireland. The origins of it are very important. In our case, it came under the two communities and terrorism. Post the peace process and ceasefire, these local communities were trying to police themselves—partly because they rejected the police completely. Yes, they dealt out punishment beatings, kneecappings and far worse, but what was interesting was that, although the communities might not have liked the punishments, they began to see a reduction in bad behaviour on the streets.
When it came in front of the policing board, we looked at other countries. The fact that it came out of terrorism in Northern Ireland is not an indication that it would be no good or would not fulfil its true potential in England, because we looked at Australia, Canada, New Zealand and America, where it had been really very successful.
There was then the idea of how to get this to be more in line with justice, because, naturally, the Department of Justice and—I am not accusing them of this—judges, and to a certain extent senior policemen, were reluctant to see anything that was outside their immediate world taking over something of it. We went down the line of bringing it into being an official practice, and that took quite a lot of nerve.
But it is extraordinary, if you actually go and visit, to see what is going on. The most important thing is that restorative justice is victim based, not perpetrator based—that it is not a soft touch for the perpetrator. I will not speak for long on this, because I have not even prepared. But it is not just a way of solving things; it does a lot more. The victims are incredibly satisfied with restorative justice. A survey produced when they were doing a seminar on the EU day of the victim in February 2019 said that 85% of victims were satisfied with the outcome, and 69% of perpetrators did not continue. The bonus for society is multifaceted: fewer people get convictions for what may, at times, be on-the-spot bad behaviour or, as we have seen, 69% of them do not misbehave again, so they have a clearer record for future employment. It keeps them out of short periods of detention. It was used originally for youths, and we do not have enough well-supervised room for youths in detention. So restorative justice helps the victims, helps the perpetrators remarkably, and is very good for society.
In the 2016-17 Session, the House of Commons Justice Committee came out with its report on restorative justice and supported it. The committee particularly supported looking at Northern Ireland. It is really nice when we can say that you should look at something positive from us in Northern Ireland—however, do look somewhere else.
While we have been in this Committee, because I was panic-struck about having anything to say, I googled “restorative justice”. We hardly need this debate. There is not a bad word about it, and there are so many pages I gave up after two or three and wrote down a couple of notes on it. But this is something that successive Governments—including Labour when they were in power—have not given true support to.
What about our prison population? What about sending people into detention, the “college of crime”, when restorative justice has the potential to be such a success? As I said, I think this debate is unnecessary. Every single person in your Lordships’ House and everybody outside can google it and have a look. If the justice side, judges and some senior policemen are still slightly careful about it because it seems to be out of their hands, they may need a bit of persuading.
But funding is an issue, and I have just heard—because I have not looked at it—that the funding was reduced. This is madness. We know that budgets are a problem, especially after everything we have been through. They are a problem for the police, for social events such as this and for justice. But this is madness. This is cutting off a not very great budget which would be saving us. The figure is that every £1 spent has saved £8. I do not think that is very well substantiated, but there is a big payback, and the young people of this country—and we are moving on to adults in Northern Ireland—earn the support for a system that is socially good and good for our population.
9.30 pm