RJU Records Increase In Self-Referrals

The Justice Ministry’s Restorative Justice Unit (RJU) has recorded an increase in self-referrals to restorative justice (RJ) intervention.

“With COVID, we’ve seen an increase in situations where there are self-referrals. This is because there is the household with other family members with whom persons may not always get along. Also, because persons are in the same space for such a prolonged period of time, what tends to happen is that conflicts arise,” Restorative Justice Coordinator, Andriene Lindsay, told JIS News.

Ms. Lindsay said that sensitising Jamaicans on the way RJ works has helped to raise public awareness.

With healing as the central aim of the administration of restorative justice, the process pulls together the parties of conflict, guided by a facilitator, and provides them the opportunity to resolve their issues.

With 18 Restorative Justice Centres, the RJU provides an avenue for conflict resolution outside the courtroom in communities across the island.

“We sensitise community members because we know that they have conflicts that are arising all the time,” Ms. Lindsay said.

Persons can be referred to restorative justice through the Courts, Police, Justices of the Peace as well as the average Jamaican, who can do a self-referral by visiting Restorative Justice Centres.

Meanwhile, the RJU remains focused on expanding the impact of restorative justice across the island, including in the nation’s correctional institutions.

Ms. Lindsay said work has been ongoing to sensitise the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) on what RJ is, how it works and its benefits.

“We are in talks now with the Deputy Commissioner to again roll that out across the institutions as well, so that we are sensitising all inmates and correctional officers. What we want to see is RJ impacting the inmate population as a way of reducing conflicts inside as well as when they come out,” Ms. Lindsay said.

The Restorative Justice Coordinator shared an experience of how RJ has benefited inmates.

“One of our self-referrals was from an inmate which was a murder case. RJ doesn’t deal with murder before conviction at all, so this was our first ever case of having a conference for a murder charge. It was a transformational conference, because we had the offender who was in prison and then we had the secondary and tertiary victims, because the primary victim was dead,” she noted.

Secondary victims are those who are in some way observers of the immediate traumatic effects on primary victims, for instance eyewitnesses and rescuers.

Tertiary victims are those removed from the critical event, but who are still impacted. This can be through encountering a primary or secondary victim, who may be an immediate neighbour, community members and former victims.

“There was a considerable amount of emotion expressed, given that this was the first time they had the opportunity to speak in that way. You could just see the family was passing through the process of healing and that’s what RJ is about. This is why we want to increase sensitisation of the inmates and DCS, so we can see more of an impact on that population,” Ms. Lindsay said.

Persons interested in using restorative justice as an option for dispute resolution can contact the Ministry of Justice at 876-906-4923 or by visiting their website at moj.gov.jm.