MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union

THEME 7
• holding young first offenders accountable through reparation to victims
and ensuring they get assistance with life goals through counselling and
school participation.
Correctional approaches will contribute to reduced crime and victimisation
through:
• investment in programmes that divert offenders from prison to community
programmes that are adequately resourced and known to tackle
successfully the causes of interpersonal violence and alcohol use;
• massive increases in the number of persons incarcerated, which can
achieve decreases in crime rates at a very high cost—in the US, increasing
the incarceration rate by 250 per cent from 1974 to 2004 is estimated to
have decreased the crime rate by 35 per cent, but at costs exceeding
USD 20 billion (enough to provide a job to every unemployed youth or
child care for the poor, both of which have been shown to have a much
larger impact on crime rates); and
• investment in correctional programme models that have been shown to
reduce recidivism. However, these models are few and reduce recidivism
by only small proportions.
Source: Butchart A, et al (2004), Preventing violence: a guide to implementing the recommendations
of the World report on violence and health. Department of Injuries and
Violence Prevention, WHO, Geneva, p. 7
JSSR IN WAR-AFFECTED SETTINGS
The months and years following the end of war are a precarious time in
which violent insecurity often increases. Crime rates can remain at much
higher levels in the initial, insecure phases of peace, and not return to
lower, pre-war levels for years. 29 Furthermore, unresolved issues linked
to the war, including crimes committed during the conflict, will sustain
an atmosphere of mistrust and discontent likely to fuel further violence
and demand for guns. If handled correctly, war tribunals, special trials, and
reconciliation programmes—which are collectively referred to as transitional
justice—can be mechanisms for societies to come to terms with
the atrocities of war and violence, and to address cultures of violence
within a context of renewal and learning from past experiences. By holding
the perpetrators of past abuses to account, transitional justice mechanisms
allow the passage from a culture of impunity to that of a rule of law.
I don’t have much confidence in the police and the courts because they
all want bribes. This is not justice.
—Afghan citizen (unknown gender), 2004 30
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