Restorative Justice

Last week SONAR was proud to be a headline sponsor of the annual conference of Thriving Survivors, a Glasgow-based charity delivering restorative justice services.

Like SONAR, Thriving Survivors uses a healthcare-based approach to improving outcomes in justice and wider service provisions. We were thrilled to be part of the conference and to engage with so many other people passionate about improving health, justice and survivor led approaches.

Restorative justice means the bringing-together of people responsible for harm and victims/survivors, either face-to-face or indirectly. It aims to give victims/survivors their voice and to help people responsible for harm understand the consequences of their actions.

The Restorative Justice Council outlines the practice of Restorative Justice using the following six key principles:

1. Restoration – the primary aim of restorative practice is to address participants needs and not cause further harm. The focus of any process must be on promoting restorative practice that is helpful, explores relationships and builds resilience.

2. Voluntarism – participation in restorative practice is voluntary and based on open, informed, and ongoing choice and consent. Everyone has the right to withdraw at any point.

3. Impartiality – restorative practitioners must remain impartial and ensure their restorative practice is respectful, non-discriminatory, and unbiased towards all participants. Practitioners must be able to recognise potential conflicts of interest which could affect their impartiality.

4. Safety – processes and practice aim to ensure the safety of all participants and create a safe space for the expression of feelings and views which must result in no further harm being caused.

5. Accessibility – restorative practice must be respectful and inclusive of any diversity needs such as mental health conditions, disability, cultural, religious, race, gender, or sexual identity.

6. Empowerment – restorative practice must support individuals to feel more confident in making their own informed choices to find solutions and ways forward which best meet their needs.

According to the Ministry of Justice, Sir Charles Pollard, the former chief constable of Thames Valley Police, was the key pioneer of restorative justice for adults in the UK when he introduced it to his force in the 1990s. The MoJ then commissioned research which found that it led to reductions in offending of up to 14 per cent.

It has been part of mainstream government policy since the 2010 green paper “Breaking the cycle”. The College of Policing has collected the up-to-date evidence of its positive impact, including reductions in post-traumatic stress symptoms in victims, reduced reoffending and (as a result) reduced costs to the criminal justice system.

Influenced by the work of Dr Judith Herman of Harvard Medical School, who spoke at the conference, Thriving Survivors seeks to help people understand and recover from the trauma that they have undergone. They believe that this process of “restoration” – of reflection and understanding – can benefit all of society. As they argue: approaching life “through a restorative lens … will allow individuals to experience full, healthy and fulfilled lives, which in turn will create a prosperous and a restorative Scotland.” That is a fantastic goal which has my full support.

Thank you, Thriving Survivors, for letting us be part of this important event.

Scotland - SONAR

In our last blog, we looked at the arguments for better healthcare in police custody in England and Wales. But – writing as a Scot, living in Glasgow – those countries are not the whole story. Scotland has its own challenges and its own reasons for considering ideas such as SONAR.

In January 2023, the key Scottish regulators for healthcare and police (Healthcare Improvement Scotland and His Majesty’s Inspectorate for Constabulary in Scotland) came together for the first time to review standards of healthcare in Scottish police custody.

The Scottish environment makes effective healthcare in police custody all the more important. Sadly, as the review highlighted, “drug deaths in Scotland are the highest in Europe with Scotland’s drug misuse rate currently 3.7 times that of the UK as a whole and higher than any European country”. This matters because people with psychiatric illnesses and psychotic disorders run a higher risk of police arrests compared to the general population. As a result, the inspectorate wanted healthcare teams in Scottish custody centres to “maximise opportunities to provide timely interventions to help improve health outcomes for people in their care”.

The inspectorate found a wide range of variation in the basic task of providing access to healthcare in custody. People in custody suites saw different types of healthcare professional depending on their location. They were seen at differing speeds, with targets for healthcare access varying between one and four hours.

Most relevant to SONAR, there was significant concern about the capturing and reporting of healthcare data. The Scottish report concluded:

“There was a recognition that improvement is needed in how services capture and report on healthcare data and key performance indicators in the context of police custody. There was consensus across all NHS Scotland boards that the current electronic system for recording healthcare data (Adastra) is not fit for purpose and does not support the comparison of clinical data nor enable national reporting.”

Looking more widely across the criminal justice system, inspection reports for Scottish prisons have also raised concerns over consistent provision of healthcare. The recent inspection reports for HMP Kilmarnock and HMP Edinburgh both reported concerns over accurate and timely provision of medication to prisoners.

SONAR and Police Scotland Custody

Following the report, Healthcare Improvement Scotland published a new draft framework for future inspections of police custody. It included several criteria for effective recording of healthcare information:

“Each patient seen by healthcare staff has a clinical record containing an up-to-date assessment.”

“Any contact with a healthcare practitioner is recorded on Police Scotland’s electronic custody system and a record made of any medication provided.”

These capabilities are at the heart of the SONAR case management system for police custody (SONAR Custody). SONAR has purpose-built screens for data entry, enabling the accurate and consistent recording of healthcare data, including medication. Since it can be accessed online, authorised staff can read healthcare data wherever is most convenient, from a healthcare professional’s medical room to a desktop PC in a prison.

SONAR also produces real time data to enable managers to improve the quality of service.

We look forward to joining the debate on the improvement of healthcare in criminal justice in every part of the UK.

From Belfast to Liverpool – Collaboration and Coming Together

Huge thanks to our team this week for organising our successful sponsorship of the 10th annual health and justice conference in Belfast – Steven, Hannah, Jason and Mike all going above and beyond in Belfast. And an even bigger thank you to Graham, Sean, Chris, Russell and Rean for holding the fort back in Chelmsford.

SONAR CMS also attended the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, likely the last party conference before the UK general election.

It was fantastic to see the interest in SONAR and we look forward to following up with many new friends both in the UK and Ireland.

What was striking was the common themes in the discussion in both Belfast and Liverpool.

The theme of the Belfast event was “building bridges”. The keynote speakers emphasised the importance on collaboration between health and justice and all their constituent agencies. Professor Nicola Ranger, Director of Nursing at the Royal College of Nursing, said that she had sought to challenge siloed working throughout her career. She said that health and justice teams should have “one purpose, one goal: the people we are looking after”.

Dr Mark Juniper, lead clinical co-ordinator (medicine) of the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death, described how better record-keeping and medicines management were linked to reductions in drug-related deaths in prisons. Dame Carol Black, leader of several reviews of drugs policy in the UK, explained that only a joined-up effort between health and justice departments in government could enable better treatment.

Across the Irish Sea, Sir Keir Starmer, Labour leader, said that his goal was to make government “joined-up” as well as “dynamic” and “strategic”. Wes Streeting, shadow health secretary, said that a “modern” NHS should be judged on how it prevents people from suffering ill health and harm.

In my presentation in Belfast, I argued that SONAR will deliver exactly this vision of joined-up health and criminal justice. It’s the reason why the individual modules of SONAR, from police custody to prisons to release, to GPIT are all part of the same healthcare information system.

I also said that I don’t have all the answers. My hope is that the health and criminal justice community can help us design the system that best meets their needs – all supported by joined-up commissioning.

Introducing the Belfast conference, Dr Caroline Watson, Chair of the Secure Environments Group of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said that the meeting should set a “foundation of hope” at a time when health and justice are under such pressure.

The wish to collaborate and to come together seems to me a great foundation on which to build.