Restorative Juvenile Justice – the Challenges – the Rewards

Bringing a child into contact with the criminal justice system is an extremely difficult issue. Decisions have to be made that will affect that child's future. The first issue to be decided is whether it is even necessary or wise to bring a child before a justice system. Is there a need for justice designed to cope with wayward children? Is it necessary to establish a separate system of justice for juveniles? In answering such issues we have to first consider who we are dealing with when we talk of children and criminal justice systems. Children living in difficult circumstances are those who would be most likely to eventually drift into more and more serious criminal behaviour. For those children assistance in the form, for example, of education, vocational training, social services, and integration into a valid social system, is necessary. What is not necessary, and what can impact negatively on the developing child, is bringing them into contact with any kind of justice system. Such children then might become those in conflict with the law, and can be children who have committed very minor offences to very grave ones as they have had contact with the justice system, often in its worst form – a closed institution – the well known academy of crime.