Book Review: Integrating Victims in Restorative Youth Justice
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225406069498 |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
| Author | Janet Jamieson |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
BOOK REVIEWS
Copyright 2006 The National Association for Youth Justice
Published by SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi)
www.sagepublications.com
ISSN 1473-2254, Vol 6(3): 229–233
Book Reviews
Crawford, A. and Burden, T., Integrating Victims in Restorative Youth Justice,
Policy Press, Bristol, 2005, £14.99 Pb, ISBN 1–86134–785–5.
Reviewed by: Dr Janet Jamieson, Department of Applied Social Science,
Lancaster University, UK.
DOI: 10.1177/1473225406069498
The referral order was introduced by the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act
1999, and consolidated by the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000.
Mandatory for all 10–17 year olds pleading guilty at their first court appearance –except
in those circumstances where the court wishes to impose a custodial sentence, a hospital
order or an absolute discharge –the disposal involves a referral to a youth offender
panel and its introduction was presented by the government as a movement away from
‘an exclusionary punitive justice and towards an inclusionary restorative justice capable
of recognizing the social contexts in which crime occurs and should be dealt with’
(Muncie, 2000: 14). In this report Crawford and Burden present evaluative research
findings in relation to the implementation of referral orders and youth offender panels
by the Restorative Justice Team within Leeds Youth Offending Service, focusing on
the particular issues raised in promoting victim involvement.
The report starts with a foreword from Rod Morgan, Chair of the Youth Justice
Board for England and Wales, which emphasizes that the involvement of community
volunteers and victims within youth offender panels is likely to present challenges at
the local level which this report can constructively inform, and I agree that it does this.
There follows a succinct and useful summary of main findings. The first chapter reviews
the key international and national influences on the development and implementation
of referral orders and youth offender panels highlighting difficulties with regard to
promoting, engendering and managing positive volunteer and victim involvement
within both a punitive context and a youth justice system which valorizes the
managerial imperatives of targets, throughputs and outcomes. The empirical work
undertaken is described in chapter two, while chapter three provides an outline of how
restorative justice services have taken shape at the local level in Leeds. The remaining
chapters present and comment upon the study’s empirical findings. Taken as a whole
the findings presented in respect of integrating victims within restorative youth justice
are positive and encouraging. For example, notwithstanding the immense difficulties
attached to encouraging victim involvement, the findings presented in chapter four
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