This course is an example of Restorative Justice, which works to restore the damaged relationship between offenders and victims of crime. It was developed by Prison Fellowship, a worldwide charity, and is available in prisons in Britain and many other countries, and also when offenders are released from prison.
I give below three testimonies about the impact of the course on individual lives and behaviour. I suggest that Restorative Justice is an important way of reducing re-offending.
“The Sycamore Tree course is truly the way forward in changing people. As a prisoner I hear other prisoners’ true feelings and views about Offending Behaviour Courses. I can say that the Sycamore Tree course is the only course that I have heard good things about, where other prisoners are actually recommending their friends and associates to do the course, and they discuss how it has ‘changed them’ and ‘how it has touched their heart’.”
“Sycamore Tree brings together offenders and victims which hits home to see first-hand the damage crime causes, as it did me. This changed my whole outlook on the decisions I make and how it impacts people.”
“What I gained from the Sycamore Tree course was a lasting and impacting understanding of the effects of actions influencing other people’s lives. I am grateful to the members of the Sycamore Tree Programme for helping me to be a part of the process that allowed me to see in clear terms how damaging my own actions have been to my victims, and also how I can ensure that my future actions can be of an altogether more positive nature. It was truly an honour and a pleasure to have met everyone who made the effort to facilitate the course.”
CIC(Criminal injuries compensation) does a lot to make the impact of conviction rather worse for the offender than it otherwise would, and yet in the darker ages of law enforcement murder could be compensated by other ways than death of the offender him/her self. Theft, however because it destabilized the community in which it occurred was punished usually by … hanging. Theft by moneyed people would have been rare before the creation of modern capitalist stock exchanges, since when it has become all too common with bad insurance policies and bankrupt banks. How does the noble lord intend capitalist rascals to compensate their hapless victims?
Ah! The Sycamore tree!!
Bring them together with their victims and there certainly would be a lynching.
It sounds as though Sycamore tree has been working in North Korea in the last day or two.
I wonder how restorative justice will work for this poor soul.
I cannot believe this country has come to this. These leaders we have are inhuman. Privatisation. This, I suppose, is what equality meant all along?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523016/Pregnant-woman-miscarried-privately-run-prison-forced-clear-blood-cell-floor.html
The promotion and management of crime by the County police forces is presumably the best way of wholesaling crime to the consumer. Do you buy crime or do you sell it?
If you are unwise enough to be taken in as a retail consumer, ie you buy it from the aggressive salesperson at the “Shop” , then you are likely to pay a hefty sum, even if you only buy the idea!
Restorative justice does nothing except encourage the purchaser to go back for more, and the seller, who is acted for by the Agent, is also encouraged to go back for more gain. The concept is therefore intrinsically concerned with
the status quo and how to maintain it.