Some of the concerns about diversionary conferencing to deal with crime must be looked at by the ACT Attorney-General, Gary Humphries. Diversionary conferencing is a method of making criminals meet their vicitims. Its present application in the ACT is called the Re-Integrative Shaming Experiment. The experiment is well worth doing and appears to be more effective than standard methods of dealing with some crime.
It is apparent from the past 200 years of “”experiment” with dealing with crime in Australia that jail, hangings, whippings and prohibition have manifestly failed. Some lateral thinking is needed. Atavistic cries for revenge gets nowhere, and pandering to those cries by politicians like the NSW leaders John Fahey and Bob Carr is more heinous because the perpetrators know what they are doing and are doing it for purely selfish, political reasons. We may often bemoan the quality of our politicians in the ACT, but Mr Humphries and his Labor predecessor Terry Connolly did not engage in the cynical, pre-election auction of penalities that occurred in NSW. Research is showing that offenders who have to confront their victims and their victims’ families are less likely to re-offend than those who go through the court process. It seems particularly promising for young first offenders.
ANU researcher Professor John Braithwaite rightly points out that the normal system of courts, fines and jail has not be subjected to rigorous evaluation about its effectiveness as a deterrent. Indeed, there are probably good grounds for suggesting that the present system encourages repeat offences _ with jails as training grounds and places that add to the alienation from society that underpins crime. It is an expensive, counter-productive system, and therefore not good for victims. Anything that promises to turn around offenders early, reintegrating them into society so they do not re-offend, is worth exploring. That said, attention must be given to procedural fairness. Clearly, not every offender is offerred diversionary conferencing. The selection process can involve the type of offence and the type of person. That means discretion. The process must have equal treatment for equal cases, in other words equality before the law. If the discretion is exercised by police (and not some arm’s length prosecutor, there must be safeguards against corruption which might see friends, workmates and family go to conferencing in instances that would otherwise go to court. This is especially true in traffic matters (notably drink-driving).
The research process where half the candidates are drawn from the hat and the other half are the control group is a research tool, not a safeguard against corruption, as has been suggested. Offering to put someone into the hat in the first place can be an item of corruption. Further, in the case of drink-driving diverting people from the courts can reduce rather than add to shaming process because court cases always go into the paper. Publicity must be part of the shaming process and is an important weapon against corruption. The names of people who go on the diversionary scheme _ other than juveniles _ should be made public.