An interesting reason to use restorative justice

By Dan Van Ness

"We're looking at thousands of dollars in damage and the courts would never impose that on first offenders. Nor would there be any sort of punitive action taken. With the restorative justice forum, the expectation - and my belief - is that they are going to be dealt with much more harshly through an RJ than they would be in the provincial court system or the youth courts. The courts would probably simply give them a conditional sentence and send them on their way. With the RJ forum we're looking at restitution and we'll be looking at some community input.

"We have the OIC's (Officer in Command's) support and we have the City's support and we're putting together a package in order to make sure that this doesn't fall on the taxpayers' shoulders. City council as well as residents in the area are going to be involved in the forum."

Jul 14, 2009 Retribution, Correspondent:Dan Van Ness, Theory, Region: North America and Caribbean, Country:Canada

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