Dubbed: “The City of Refuge Restorative Justice Forum”, it seeks to provide a platform for victims of crimes who are willing and ready to get healing by engaging with the offenders of the crime.

The forum, which will start next year was launched in Accra over the weekend, and it is being partnered by the Center for African Peace and Conflict Resolution (CAPCR) at California State Uni­versity, Sacramento, United States.

Speaking at the inauguration on the sidelines of Meet, Greet and Network with Professor Ernest Uwazie, Former Chair of Criminal Justice, and Director and Founder of CAPCR at California State Uni­versity, Sacramento, the chairper­son of GHACMA, Ms Georgette Francois, said the initiative seeks to bring some form of peace and closure to victims of crimes.
She noted that the initiative aims to repair the harm done to victims and perpetrators taking responsi­bility for their actions while being held accountable.

“In doing so, we work to ensure that offenders take responsibility for their actions, to understand the harm they have caused, to give them an opportunity to redeem themselves, and to discourage them from causing further harm”.

“And also the intention is to empower victims to actively partic­ipate in the process and lessen their sense of helplessness and worry,” she said.

Furthermore, Ms Francois stated that the Restorative Justice pro­gramme would assist juveniles who were in cells for minor offences.

She added that another area of focus was the remand prisoners, stating that a lot of them were in prison due to lack of bail for them and they ended up being incarcer­ated.

“Sometimes these prisoners are being jailed for minor offences like stealing of food items and when they are in prison, some of them become hardened criminals and become worse persons to endanger society when they come out, so the programme wants to reform these prisoners before they are released back into society,” the chairperson said.

Ms Francois said they would be engaging with the state, especially the Attorney General, to bring out some of these offenders through the restorative justice principle, starting with minor offences while paving way for the more serious crimes.

On his part, Prof. Uwazie said some inmates for some reasons were willing and trying to come to terms with their crimes to make amends but did not know how or where to start.

This, he noted brought about the creation of the forum to help vic­tims and inmates to come to terms with crimes and to heal from these past wounds.