Locked up potential: A strategy for reforming prisons and rehabilitating prisoners.

Source: (2009) London: The Centre for Social Justice.

We make a number of recommendations that would give victims a more important role in the criminal justice system and prisoners a proper awareness of the damage they do to the victims of their crimes. These recommendations include introducing Victim Impact Classes (VICs) as pioneered in some US states; compulsory financial reparations by prisoners to victims; and a major expansion of restorative justice conferencing. We regard restorative justice as a well tested but surprisingly under-utilised method of prisoner rehabilitation. We recommend the creation of a national restorative justice agency and a new Act of Parliament, the Restorative Justice Act, to provide a legislative framework for restorative justice expansion.