Anti-racism organisation, Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda, is calling for Bermuda to adopt a restorative justice system to deal with criminal behaviour.Focused on repairing the harm caused by criminal behaviour, the restorative justice process involves all parties to a crime victims, offenders and the wider community.Key methods include conferences between victims and offenders in which the specifics of the crime and harm caused are discussed.The goal is to promote healing and help the victim recover from the crime while giving the offender an opportunity to make amends.Advocates say that it is a more productive system of justice than a conventional system based on punishment and retribution because it is focused on the victims.The concept was explained at last weekend’s racial justice conference organised by Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda.“Victims in a lot of instances have holes in their hearts, and no amount of theory, no amount of self-help, no amount of encouragement can change that,” said CURB member Hashim Estwick.“Some victims need answers. They need to know what happened and the only person that can tell them what happened is the person who did it. So restorative justice creates a framework so that the victim and the families and whoever else is involved can meet face to face and have a dialogue about what happened.”CURB president Cordell Riley stressed that, unlike conventional justice, offenders are guided to understand the actual harm that their crimes cause.And he said that he wanted Bermuda to be the first country to fully adopt the restorative justice model.Pastor Leroy Bean, founder of anti-gang organisation CARTEL, told the conference that he supported the restorative justice concept, but warned that “there are some people out there who know how to circumvent the system”.“So even in restoring them we still need to make them accountable for their actions,” he said.Last night Mr Riley elaborated on the concept.“Today when crimes are committed, they are an offence against the Crown. The Crown extracts its pound of flesh and the victim has to pursue matters on their own, for example via a civil suit. Often the victim does not feel that justice has been done, and the offender is not made aware of the impact of his or her crime on the victim and on the community,” he said.“Crime causes harms, harms create needs, and needs require restorative responses. A restorative approach meets needs, repairs harms and prevents crime. All those who are harmed by crime have the opportunity to heal and to understand, with the overall effect of there being less crime in the future.“That is the essence of restorative justice. We feel that not only would such an approach be good for Bermuda, we feel that it is necessary. When we have people saying that they cannot move to certain parts of the island, restoration needs to take place. The punitive model of justice that we currently have is being adopted by those involved in violent crime.”He said that restorative justice systems are the norm in indigenous cultures.“In New Zealand, for youth crimes, a restorative approach is taken. All participants in restorative justice must volunteer” but those who do not will go through the criminal justice system. In effect, there would be two systems running parallel.”Ten CURB members have already been trained in Restorative/Social Justice Mediation and the organisation is looking to train some more.Other goals are to get the courts to adopt it on a trial basis and to set up an Institute for Restorative/Social Justice as a resource for the court system and the general public.A final goal, said Mr Riley is “adopting the restorative approach as a part of the complete criminal justice system, making Bermuda the first country to do so.”Mr Riley said that the approach can be used “throughout the Criminal Justice System from law enforcement to prosecution to the judiciary and finally to probation and parole officers.“The current evidence is that this approach significantly reduces the rate of reoffending and prevents future crime.” Funding it would be easy, he added. “With less people going through the Criminal Justice System, a fraction of the money spent on the current system could be used for RJ with long-lasting effects. This is a win-win process for the community.”