Professor Ian O'Donnell:

My view is that it has a role to play at every point in the system, particularly in terms of diverting people away from the criminal process as well as addressing some of the issues that come up during the term of a prison sentence. There seems to be an appetite for it nationally. When members of the National Crime Forum went around the country in the late 1990s trying to get a sense of the public mood on crime and punishment, the issue of restorative justice came up again and again. There was a real sense, particularly among communities beleaguered by crime, that prison was not the only or whole solution. People certainly wanted respite from criminality, including anti-social behaviour, but there was a view that restorative justice might be one element of a package of measures to assist communities to deal with the problems confronting them.

The National Crime Forum was an exercise in ascertaining the public mood and on foot of its report, the National Crime Council was established. This, however, was one of the few so-called quangos to be abolished some years ago. The crime council is gone, the report of the crime forum is long forgotten, but the issue of restorative justice came up for discussion once again with the establishment of the National Commission on Restorative Justice. It is an issue that certainly is worthy of debate. In my view, it might be more relevant in terms of keeping people out of custody and diverting them from crime rather than at the reintegration stage, when they have already served a sentence.