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.

…

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.

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?

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.

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This video from The Guardian shows the attack on Ian Tomlinson at a G20 protest in London, shortly before he died. It shows Tomlinson, who was not part of the demonstration, being assaulted from behind and pushed to the ground by baton-wielding police.

How many others where assaulted? We’ll never know – the police did everything in their powers to keep photographers away, such as reported by The British Journal of Photography when police used Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 to move journalists during the demonstration. Are we on the road to a police state or am I being over dramatic.

The man who died during the G20 demonstrations in the City of London had been pushed back minutes earlier by police officers, the Independent Police Complaints Commission confirmed yesterday.

Revealing that it was now managing the City of London police’s investigation into the death of Ian Tomlinson, the IPCC said he had been blocked from walking home from his job at a newsagent’s by a police cordon. Owen Bowcott and Paul Lewis, The Guardian.

At the G20 demonstrations the police used a tactic known as kettling, which is basically containing demonstrators and refusing to let them leave for hours – in the G20 case eight hours. There are many problems with kettling or containment and the death of Ian Tomlinson highlights one – he was not even involved in the demonstration.

The death is bad enough, but to compound matters the police openly lied, with the latest witness statements and photographs contradict the version of events put forward by police immediately after his death.

What is happening to democracy in our county, surely we’ve the right to protest? We should be thankful that people took photographs as photographing a police officer carries a 10-year-sentence under the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 and if they hadn’t we’d only be left with the word of the police.

I’d like say when are we going to rid ourselves of this government: the trouble is the alternative will be worse – indeed what has happened to our democracy when photographing a police officer carries a 10-year-sentence?