REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
Tá lúcháir mhór orm bheith anseo libh inniu chun an chomhdháil tábhachtach seo a oscailt go hoifigiúil. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as an chaoin-chuireadh.
I am delighted to have this opportunity to officially open this important and timely conference on restorative justice, and I commend the Victim/Offender Mediation Service for their work in bringing together so many of the key players with experience and insight in this field.
There has been a growing interest in recent years, not just in Ireland but across Europe and indeed further afield, in the application of the principles and potential of restorative justice to the field of criminal justice. In some ways, of course, we are simply completing a circle, for restorative justice was practised in many ancient civilisations, indeed it was an integral part of our own Brehon Laws, and up to the present day, it is a core element of the Maori culture and approach to dealing with crime. It is of course an ethic familiar to and deeply embedded in the field of civil law.
Contemporary discussions about crime and punishment tend towards a more sophisticated victim awareness than in the past, but sentencing those convicted of crimes has been historically, and remains today, largely about punishment for the offence and assuaging public outrage in a manner which leaves the victim out of any retributive or restorative process. It is easy to understand why victims, in many instances, might want to be left out of that process but there is an underlying gap in our criminal justice system which is not fully met and never could be met by criminal injury compensation schemes or recourse to civil redress. That gap is caused by the absence of a place for the telling, the vindication and attempt at healing the victim. In truth the criminal justice system has little space for the full story of the impact on the victim’s life, the ongoing trauma, the changed landscape of his or her life. It has not been constructed to have that space, though in recent years victim impact reports have begun to shift the kilter of the court’s focus and to inform sentencing options.
Many victims can recite stories which are quite shocking and challenging. Even crimes that may seem relatively minor to some, crimes that a seasoned police officer or case-hardened judge might regard as relatively low impact, have a perplexing capacity to skew a particular life and leave a lasting psychological scar. The absence of peace of mind in the lives of such victims, ripples out in its effects, tainting family, street, community, country. Most victims have little experience of the criminal justice system. They are unaware of its limits and may be ignorant of the narrowness of its focus and so theirs can be a bitter experience of a system which has not been designed and indeed is not equipped to address their personal complex needs and fears. It can be the case that instead of helping them draw a line in the sand and move on with their lives, it can leave some victims feeling sidelined, irrelevant and powerless.
It is that feeling of powerlessness and exclusion that programmes based on the principles of restorative justice are ideally placed to address. The common thread of such programmes is their emphasis on the human dimension, on enabling victims to tell their story, to seek to understand what has happened and why, to be active participants rather than passive onlookers. Restorative justice also recognises the role of offenders in this process, the importance, especially for young offenders, of understanding and deeply internalising the consequences of their actions, taking responsibility for what they have done and making amends by apology or other means.
Clearly restorative justice is not appropriate to every victim, every offender or every crime, but in the canon of responses to crime it has a role to play as one of a range of options to be used where appropriate. Initiatives such as the Victim/Offender Mediation Service and the Nenagh Community Reparation Project, show that it can provide the basis for a better outcome for both sides, helping to heal the scars of those who have been hurt by crime, while also aiming to reduce repeat offences. The positive effects of diverting even one young person away from a lifetime of crime is immense, and I warmly commend all those who have worked so hard to get both projects off the ground.
One of the remarkable aspects of restorative justice is how rarely revenge is a motive for victims to participate in this process. Far more important is the need to communicate the pain that has been caused, to get at the truth of what happened and why, so that they can begin their own journey towards healing. This is as true for the individual who has been hurt by crime, as it is for a society that has been torn apart by hatred. At the core of initiatives such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and indeed a number of initiatives in Northern Ireland, is the same human need to tell one’s story, to have the truth heard and acknowledged. We cannot change the past, but we can help build a future, in the memorable words of Seamus Heaney, “on the far side of revenge”, a future that respects human dignity at individual and collective level.
That is what all of you at this Conference are seeking to achieve. Criminality robs people of their joy in life. It demeans the perpetrator, it hurts the victim, it weakens the civic fabric that holds us together as a community. We all want healthy communities and we know they are made up of healthy individuals, people who are good neighbours, good friends, good people. Your work is about finding that good, harnessing it, nourishing it and putting it at the service of the individual who is hurt and the individual who does the hurting. It is important work, it helps rebuild our individual and collective peace of mind, our trust and our hope in the future. I warmly commend you on your efforts, and wish you every success in your deliberations.
Go gcúití Dia bhur saothar daoibh.