Bringing young criminals face-to-face with their victims can cut crime and re-offending, campaigners suggest.

A Northern Ireland restorative justice scheme run since 2003 has proved more effective at changing behaviour than custody, the Prison Reform Trust says.

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Under the restorative justice approach, offenders formally recognise the consequences of their actions and apologise to victims.

The meetings can be take place as part of a court procedure or be in lieu of a prosecution.

Participants in Northern Ireland’s Youth Conference process have also been ordered to pay compensation, take part in educational activities and unpaid work, or made to have treatment for alcohol, drug, or mental health problems.

More than 5,500 meetings between victims and offenders have taken place in Northern Ireland since 2003.

Figures for the 2003 to 2005 period show the top offence to be dealt with was assault, with 25% of offences referred.

This was followed by criminal damage at 19% and theft at 17%. Just 6% of burglaries and 0.5% of robberies ended in such an approach.

Some 38% of 10 to 17 year olds participating in the scheme in Northern Ireland in 2006 re-offended within a year, compared to 71% of those given custodial terms.

The percentage of those re-offending where restorative justice was used instead of a prosecution was 28%. BBC.

Now if these figures can be repeated across the UK – restorative justice isn’t just financially beneficial it is also socially, mentally and educational beneficial – although in this time of austerity any savings must be welcome – so what’s stopping us?

Roman Polanski back in 1978 admmitted to having sex with a child after being accused of rape before he could be sentenced Polanski skipped the country never to return. At the request of the US Justice Department the Swiss authorities have arrested Polanski with the intention of extradicting him to US to face sentencing. These filmmakers, actors and producers believe he should be set free instead– nutters every one of them.

Fatih Akin
Stephane Allagnon
Woody Allen
Pedro Almodovar
Wes Anderson
Jean-Jacques Annaud
Alexandre Arcady
Fanny Ardant
Asia Argento
Darren Aronofsky
Olivier Assayas
Alexander Astruc
Gabriel Auer
Luc Barnier
Christophe Barratier
Xavier Beauvois
Liria Begeja
Gilles Behat
Jean-Jacques Beineix
Marco Bellochio
Monica Bellucci
Djamel Bennecib
Giuseppe Bertolucci
Patrick Bouchitey
Paul Boujenah
Jacques Bral
Patrick Braoudé
Andre Buytaers
Christian Carion
Henning Carlsen
Jean-Michel Carre
Patrice Chereau
Elie Chouraqui
Souleymane Cisse
Alain Corneau
Jerome Cornuau
Miguel Courtois
Dominique Crevecoeur
Alfonso Cuaron
Luc et Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Jonathan Demme
Alexandre Desplat
Rosalinde et Michel Deville
Georges Dybman
Jacques Fansten
Joël Farges
Gianluca Farinelli
Jacques Fansten
Etienne Faure
Michel Ferry
Scott Foundas
Stephen Frears
Thierry Fremaux
Sam Gabarski
René Gainville
Tony Gatlif
Costa Gavras
Jean-Marc Ghanassia
Terry Gilliam
Christian Gion
Marc Guidoni
Buck Henry
David Heyman
Laurent Heynemann
Robert Hossein
Jean-Loup Hubert
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Gilles Jacob
Just Jaeckin
Alain Jessua
Pierre Jolivet
Kent Jones
Roger Kahane,
Nelly Kaplan
Wong Kar Waï
Ladislas Kijno
Harmony Korine
Jan Kounen
Diane Kurys
Emir Kusturica
John Landis
Claude Lanzmann
André Larquié
Vinciane Lecocq
Patrice Leconte
Claude Lelouch
Gérard Lenne
David Lynch
Michael Mann
François Margolin
Jean-Pierre Marois
Tonie Marshall
Mario Martone
Nicolas Mauvernay
Radu Mihaileanu
Claude Miller
Mario Monicelli
Jeanne Moreau
Sandra Nicolier
Michel Ocelot
Alexander Payne
Richard Pena
Michele Placido
Philippe Radault
Jean-Paul Rappeneau
Raphael Rebibo
Yasmina Reza
Jacques Richard
Laurence Roulet
Walter Salles
Jean-Paul Salomé
Marc Sandberg
Jerry Schatzberg
Julian Schnabel
Barbet Schroeder
Ettore Scola
Martin Scorcese
Charlotte Silvera
Abderrahmane Sissako
Paolo Sorrentino
Guillaume Stirn
Tilda Swinton
Jean-Charles Tacchella
Radovan Tadic
Danis Tanovic
Bertrand Tavernier
Cécile Telerman
Alain Terzian
Pascal Thomas
Giuseppe Tornatore
Serge Toubiana
Nadine Trintignant
Tom Tykwer
Alexandre Tylski
Betrand Van Effenterre
Wim Wenders

Source: indieWire.

For 31 years he lived as the world’s most celebrated fugitive, feted by his peers in the film industry while on the run from American police after admitting having sex with a child.

But, it was revealed today, the past has finally caught up with Roman Polanski. The film director was arrested in Switzerland on Saturday on a decades-old warrant relating to the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

The director had travelled to Switzerland to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich film festival, the organisers of which expressed “great consternation and shock” at his detention. Esther Addley and Kate Connolly in Berlin, The Guardian.

Not “great consternation and shock” that a confessed paedophile has been a fugitive for 31-years – actually fugitive my ass – he’s been happily living in Paris – not any longer hopefully – although he’s some powerful friends.

France’s culture minister Frédéric Mitterand said he was “dumbfounded” at the arrest, adding that he “strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them”. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, “is following the case with great attention and shares the minister’s hope that the situation can be quickly resolved”, the minister said.

A statement from the Swiss Association of Directors called it a “grotesque judicial farce and a monstrous cultural scandal”, while the country’s Association of Film Directors and Script Writers called the move “a slap in the face for the entire cultural community in Switzerland”. Esther Addley and Kate Connolly in Berlin, The Guardian.

Still I don’t expect they’d feel the same if Polanski had raped and buggered their 13-year-old daughter – even after 31 years.

Dana Fowley watched two men, Ian Davidson and Neil Kendall, accused of raping her when she was just 10 walk free – why?

The case collapsed after Dana Fowley’s mother, 46-year-old Caroline Dunsmore, who is serving a 12-year jail sentence for the abuse of Dana Fowley, gave the High Court in Dunfermline contradictory accounts from the witness box.

On the first day of the trial, she told jurors that she had watched television while her daughter was raped by the men at a chalet at Abernethy Caravan Park.

However, on Monday, Dunsmore said she had been “mistaken” in her account and that neither Mr Kendall or Mr Davidson had sex with her daughter.

The Crown said Dunsmore’s evidence had been an essential part of their case.

The judge Lady Stacey acquitted both Mr Kendall and Mr Davidson of the charges against them and said they were allowed to go free. BBC.

This leaves Dana Fowley’s word against her abusers – yet again the rapists win: I refer you to the appallingly low conviction rate of just 6% for rape which Afua Hirsch reported for The Guardian back in March of this year.

A travesty of justice, what hope does a child have when a 29-year-old woman can’t obtain justice?

I’ve long believed the only answer to drugs is legalisation as I covered in Legalize Drugs and it’s liberal quotes from Johann Hari’s article Obama Must End the War on Drugs – or Mexico and Afghanistan Will Collapse. Neil Robertson’s post on Liberal conspiracy only re-enforces that opinion.

On 16th February 2002, Valentina Rosendo Cantú was washing her clothes in a stream near her home in Caxitepec, Mexico, when six soldiers approached. Seemingly too busy for pleasantries, the men started barking questions at her: Who was she? Where was she from? Had she seen the people they were looking for? Did she recognise the names on the list they thrust in front of her?

Her answers weren’t good enough, so one soldier pulled a gun and threatened to shoot. Another punched her so hard that she passed out. When she came to, two men tore off her underwear and raped her, one after the other. She was sixteen years old.

It took several months for Valentina to find a doctor willing to treat her; her nearest hospital turned her away because they didn’t want any trouble from the military. The next nearest, which she walked for eight hours to reach, examined her but offered no medicine. Only after legal action was threatened did she finally receive the gynaecological care she needed.

At the time of writing, no criminal prosecution has ever been brought against these men and no one has been formally disciplined by a military which has perpetually dragged its feet over investigations. Some 7 years later, she still hasn’t found justice.

This case is just one of many allegations of human rights abuses levelled at the Mexican military in pursuit of an expensive, bloody and failed war on drugs. As well as rape, the allegations include enforced disappearance, torture, arbitrary detention and unlawful killing. And it’s all being bankrolled by the United States of America.

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How much longer we can tolerate this grossly expensive, brutal & fruitless war on drugs. For decades the United States has lavished money on Central/Latin America and beyond for the purpose of fighting narco-trafficking; it’s sent these countries arms and trained their military, and all it’s ever achieved are momentary, short-lived price rises. Cartels have risen & fallen, gangsters have come & gone, Presidents have been elected & defeated. Yet for all the money it spends in its own country and throughout the region, it has never once looked like it was winning.

Instead, we just keep piling up the victims. If the ‘war on drugs’ really was a proper war, then the rape of Valentina Rosendo Cantu, and many other cases cited in this Human Rights Watch report, might well have constituted a war crime. If that doesn’t bring into sharp focus the kinds of acts we’re subsidising in order to fight a drugs trade which will never end, then I’m not sure anything will. Neil Robertson, Liberal Conspiracy.

As I said at the start it’s time to legalize drugs.

The Liverpool captain and England midfielder Steven Gerrard was cleared of affray today after a row over controlling the music playing in a bar.

Liverpool crown court heard that Marcus McGee, 34, was punched in the face by the footballer in a brawl at a bar in Southport last December.

Gerrard admitted hitting McGee three times but denied affray, saying he had been acting in self-defence as he thought the other man was about to strike him.

The case centred on whether the jury believed Gerrard had been acting in self-defence. Helen Carter, The Guardian.

Here’s a video from The Guardian.

Did the Jury watch the same video? Seems like money, talks the guilty free.

This video from The Guardian shows what happens if you ask for a police officers number – arrest and four days in prison.

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I do wonder why some of the video appears to have been shot through a telescope though – I don’t know of a camera that produces such an effect.

Over the last week there’s been a steady stream of video’s of the police violence at the G20 protest – it seems strange we’ve not seen anything from the police surveillance cameras: weren’t they working or do they show something worse? Here are some videos from The Guardian.

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Man walking away from police bitten by dog.

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Plainclothes policemen with batons.

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Press photographers told you will go to jail if you continue taking photographs.

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Riot police break up climate camp

Something out of a dictatorship not a democracy.

Dave Highbury has a video that apparently shows the police blocking the ambulance sent to Ian Tomlinson – even if this wasn’t the actual ambulance it contradicts the police’s claim that they did everything possible to assist Tomlinson

Hat Tip: Liberal Conspiracy.

Another piece of the Jigsaw in what happened to Ian Tomlinson.