Victim-offender mediation and the gatekeeping role of police

This paper reports on implications for the management of police discretion arising from a victim-offender mediation 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 ofJustice. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Department