Prohibición de persecución penal múltiple

Middle management appear to be aware that restorative justice is more than just giving frontline officers a few hours training and then them going off and doing restorative justice.

184 It is impossible to accurately ascertain if this awareness was in place back when restorative justice was first launched in 2008/09, however the discussions in some of the focus groups alluded to a lack of understanding in relation to this. Learning from past mistakes is seen as a key part of this re-implementation and, as the following two excerpts from middle management show there is a genuine acknowledgement by those implementing the new restorative approach that they are attempting to create a culture change across the organisation:

I think for me the biggest obstacle is erm I‟d probably go with the culture and communication issues and I know you asked for one but the two are intertwined, by communicating upwards and downwards we change the culture of an organisation, but the culture has got to be ready to accept that. And that‟s why it didn‟t fly the first time, because the culture wasn‟t ready to accept it. So by acknowledging that we can adapt communication, start picking off some of the key issues but the cultural change in the organisation is making that easier for us. So that‟s what I‟d say the obstacle around us bringing it in was around the cultural issues [IV9]

I think also this time we‟ve learnt from why it didn‟t work, or we‟ve tried to sort of produce a better product really because we gave kind of half a morning session on this is RJ and then we ask well why are you using it and it‟s because it‟s total culture change, people aren‟t familiar with it. People don‟t know how to do it really, so they don‟t do it, because they‟ve not been encouraged to do it - and then we ask well why aren‟t they doing it? So I think this time it‟s a lot more through and we‟re investing in that training to get the rewards at the end. [IV2]

Training and communication are seen to be the key ways in which to help create this cultural shift. The steering group that was set up to implement restorative approaches recognised these two areas from the start of the project and smaller sub teams worked on them. From the training perspective it was decided that a bottom-up approach would be taken so that frontline officers would take ownership of it. The training was developed in-house but linked in to the restorative justice council and their charter marks. The senior officer leading the training development describes the approach to its development as such:

So we decided having looked at the previous training I wasn‟t really happy with it and we decided to do a complete rewrite of the whole training but not get our training department to do it. So I pulled together a focus group … I got various different commands ... crime and justice, response, neighbourhoods, T & C [tasking and coordination] department from all the different areas [geographical areas or localities across the force] to sit in a room. I went through the old training and I went through … the outcomes that I want from the new training. And then I said to them, „right, we‟re going to lock ourselves in this room and we‟re not leaving until we do this!‟ And the basis or the theory for that was to write some training that was easily understandable by the cops, er they would be able to sort of acknowledge it and understand it and it wasn‟t above them. [IV9]

This long except is salient as many, particularly the top command, ascribed the failure of the previous implementation as being, at least in part, down to the training. Here this senior manager clearly recognises that the bigger (and more complicated issue) of organisational

185 culture is a crucial factor. The reasons for not employing the training department or

investing further in an external company to deliver the training were to create this bottom up drive. To engage with frontline officers and to recognise the questions that they had in relation to restorative justice. The final training incorporated some of the initial findings from the focus group sessions, which focused on the practical aspects of „doing‟ restorative justice. All the questions and issues that frontline officers raised across each of the four focus groups were compiled into a checklist; this was used as part of the training

development so that all the questions raised were answered in detail. For the initial two day training roll-out the checklist (Appendix D) was provided to all officers so they could check off or make a note of the answer to every question they raised.

What is striking, and true to the typology put forward by Farkas and Manning (1997), was that top command saw the aim of the training as being something completely different; for them training should “light people‟s fire” [IV1] and engage people: “I want people who are passionate advocates, passionate practitioners training people, you know – people with street cred” [IV1]. By recognising the issue in implementation as being due, at least in part, to organisational culture it was therefore possible to have trainers who were passionate advocates of restorative justice, but who also dealt with the micro-level practical issues that the frontline officers described as being some of barriers to them carrying out restorative justice.

It was very clear when talking with members of the restorative steering group and for some officers that I met during the focus group sessions that the force had many passionate advocates for restorative justice. However, it was recognised that at the start when

restorative justice was first rolled out in 2008/09 many officers were against it. As discussed in Chapter Six during the first rounds of training many officers were „anti-restorative justice‟. Managers now were much more attuned to the needs of officers and the need to bring about cultural change and the need to appeal to ensure that the new training was more appealing to officers:

I think once they‟ve been through the training, and tested it, and tried it, then we‟ll get somewhere. One of the greatest barriers, I think, is … we‟ve gone through a journey around reducing staff, reducing cops: demand‟s gone down - but we‟ve reduced our cops as well. So we‟re in a difficult place, and I think what I need to do is [to try] to get the culture from quantity to quality, because you speak to cops and [restorative justice] is „another thing to do‟ but ... this is actually about reducing demand, preventing offending and empowering victims. [This is the picture] we need to get across. And all of those things are covered in the training programme … we‟ve got one message that the training programme is built, that it has been

developed by cross command working group, and then we‟ll get it in, and then we‟ll start changing the culture of our organisation - hopefully. [IV7]

186

I think is just getting over that culture switch from the enforcement side to try and get operational cops that are generally wired into demand, as in, you know, we‟ve got a radio, we‟ve got to get there within fifteen minutes, we‟ve got to deal with it, we‟ve got another job to move on to actually, without thinking about the problem- solving, empowering victims. And I think we get that bit, we get the victim bit but switching on to reducing demand and reducing reoffending and it‟s that quantity versus quality, that‟s what I see, is the biggest challenge.” [IV7]

In generally the mood across the steering group as they were about to the launch the new restorative approach was positive. Officers were seen as ready for the re-implementation. In particular, there was recognition of the current problems facing staff as a result to the cuts and therefore there was an emphasis on how restorative justice would help to reduce demand:

I think people are ready for it, people understand that they‟re really pushed and really busy and they want to do something that is going to reduce the demand on them so I think we‟re probably in the right place again when we have the training that we produced. [IV3]

Despite this positivity there was an acknowledgement it is a very big task and that whilst the timing might be right in terms of cultural shifts and the workforce being more adaptive to change there is still never a good time to launch a big project like this. Furthermore saying that restorative justice would help reduce demand was one thing, but there were no extra resources, for example, a co-ordinator to help organise conferences, therefore officers would still have to find this time in addition to their workload. The impact of spending cuts was one issue raised, and some middle managers were worried that they were already asking their staff to do more with less:

Hearts and minds that‟s a practical issue … It‟s marrying up, or it‟s changing that culture from purely performance in terms of detection of crime, in terms of

conviction, to solving the problem and through things like restorative justice and solving the problem in terms of the criminal or the potential criminal, or on behalf of the victim and being victim focused or victim centred. It‟s not a journey we‟re afraid of making, but it is a difficult one when we‟re already asking so much of the staff as it is. They‟re already working ridiculous hours I‟ve got people turning down overtime left right and centre who are short of money because they just can‟t work anymore. They‟re just tired and under loads and loads of family stress … and everything else. I‟m not saying that everybody‟s like that but a lot of people are so it‟s another big ask on top of dwindling resources. [IV6]

This makes a very important point in relation to some of the issues faced when

implementing restorative justice across a police force. Unlike other organisations the police force cannot stop for a day or even for a few hours, the wheel is constantly turning.

Restorative justice cannot be delivered across the force as a whole in a single „training day‟, even when booked to attend the training officers were still likely to have to reschedule or to

187 be called out if an incident arose. After the training session the officers do not go back to a clean desk ready to start doing things „restoratively‟ they go back to their ongoing cases and while they might want to consider using restorative justice when they get a minute to get their head around it, that minute may never come. Whilst cultural changes may enable greater acceptance of restorative justice, practical barriers still need to be addressed.