Victim—Offender Mediation and the Gatekeeping Role of Police

Abstract

This paper reports on implications for the management of police discretion arising from a Victim—Offender pilot project in Queensland, Australia. The pilot was conducted with juvenile offenders and was highly successful on a range of key outcomes related to restorative justice. However, the project suffered from very low referrals from police, and there were no referrals from the courts, partly because of magistrates' deference to police decisions. As a consequence, many crime victims and young offenders and their caregivers had no opportunity to benefit from reparation. On this basis, a recommendation was made to curtail police discretion severely by building into the case disposition process mandatory consultation regarding mediation with all victims and offenders. This posed a direct challenge to the traditional wide discretionary powers held by police in their gatekeeping role. This research was commissioned by the Queensland Department of Justice. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Department.

Youth justice conferencing and police referrals: The gatekeeping role of police in Queensland, Australia

“…On the other hand, it was identified that officers' decisions might vary according to their attitudes and opinions (Pollock, 1998;Reiner, 1996). This can lead to disparity and discrimination in the way people are processed (Cunneen, 2001;Prenzler & Hayes, 1999).…”

“…These reasons included officers' lack of awareness of the availability of conferencing, lack of training in the necessary administration procedures, and the inability to attend conferences due to operational constraints. While these explanations all revolve around operational issues, a competing explanation for officers' reluctance to refer to a conference is the inappropriate use of their discretionary powers (Prenzler & Hayes, 1999). The purpose of this research was to investigate the reasons for the low rate of referrals by examining police attitudes towards conferencing and their use of discretion.…”

Police decision-making with young offenders: Examining barriers to the use of diversion options

“…That is, while police are not sole determinants of individual outcomes and have very limited discretion where serious (e.g. violent) crime has occurred, they are nevertheless the key entry point or ‘gatekeepers’ to the justice and diversionary systems (Prenzler & Hayes, 2000; Schulenberg & Warren, 2009; Stewart & Smith, 2004). The following section explores the literature on police discretionary decision-making.…”