I picked up your message on a dog-leg filing from Australia about the
development of an Innu Justice Diversion Program. From the few pages
I picked up an absolute resonance with what we are presently doing in
South Africa.
The `we' is a group of people involved in juvenile justice who have
just finished drafting a Bill on JJ for the new government. We are
presently going through an extensive process of grassroots discussion
and negotiation in order to arrice at a culturally-appropriate and
historically-connected justice system for kids. When that gets
embedded we hope to change the whole justice system - but kids first.
The reason I'm writing is that the ideas in the Innu draft are so
similar to ours that it may be fruitful to open up a communication
link between the two processes. We have made diversion the central
process, with imprisonment and punishment the absolute exception. We
are going to use a family group conference, consisting of families,
community people, friends and a youth justice worker to deal with
most juvenile lawbreaking. A novelty which we are going to have to
fight for is that we will keep the `professionals' out of the process
for as long as possible. No charge is laid unless the conflict
resolution processes break down and only then does an offender enter
the formal justice system.
The emphasis is on community healing, and on preventing the offender
becoming the victim of the justice system. Our belief is that a
victim will never be interested in restitution and reconciliation and
that aggregate solutions - shoving offenders together in mass
programmes or detention - simply creates the problem we're trying to
solve.
I can attach documents and would like more information from you.
Can we make the link?
Regards,
don
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Dr Donald Pinnock
Institute of Criminology
University of Cape Town
Private Bag, Rondebosch 7700
South Africa
Phone 021-650 2988/9
Fax 021-650 3790
E-Mail CRIDON@protem.uct.ac.za
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