A NEW service has launched in North Yorkshire to give victims more of a voice in the criminal justice system.

The North Yorkshire Restorative Justice Service is designed to help victims receive answers and rehabilitate offenders by helping them to understand the hurt and fear they have caused.

The aim is to bring victim and offender together outside – but alongside – the criminal justice system to reduce reoffending and give victims answers and the ability to move on.

At the launch of the service in York this week, the region’s crime commissioner Julia Mulligan said: “All too often the victim of crime can be the forgotten person in the criminal justice system, having to relive the offence and unable to work out why they’ve been targeted.

“Restorative justice has the ability to change that - putting victims in the driving seat, allowing them to get answers and, hopefully, recover.

“By bringing the victim and offender together, sometimes through letters, sometimes in carefully controlled meetings, we can not only help the victim but also make the crime personal for an offender, who all too rarely has to face the true reality of their actions.

“By making it not about objects or unknowns but personal possessions and individual lives, they are much more likely to think twice and less likely to reoffend.”

The new service will have the capacity to deal with more than 300 referrals a year initially, rising to 400 by March 2022.

Currently, just over 200 referrals for the solution are made every year.

North Yorkshire Police’s deputy chief constable Phil Cain, said: “We must not lose sight of the fact that behind all the reported crime, the convictions and the sentences, there are real people whose lives have been turned upside down by what has happened to them.”

He added: “Restorative justice aims to help alleviate some of the hurt caused to them, help them move on with their lives, and show the perpetrator the human, personal cost of their offending, which we hope, will make them think again.”