Meeting the young person who burgled or assaulted you is at the heart of theconcept of restorative justice. Arminta Wallace reports

If you were mugged by a juvenile, would you want to meet your attacker? Or how about squaring up to the young person who stole your car, vandalised your property or made obscene phone calls to your home? Your instinctive response would probably be "Thanks, but no, thanks," or even "If I was in the same room as that little b**** I'd . . ."

But an imaginative scheme operated by specially trained gardaí has been getting offenders and victims around a table to discuss the crime and seek reconciliation - and the results appear overwhelmingly positive. According to a recently published evaluation of the scheme's pilot programme, such meetings can, provided they are properly managed, be highly, even spectacularly beneficial to both victims and offenders.

Using a principle known as restorative justice, the scheme operates under the aegis of the Children's Act 2001, much of which came into force last May, and the Garda's juvenile diversion programme, introduced in 1963 to involve young offenders in sporting, academic or social activities. By bringing victim and offender together around a conference table under the supervision of a Garda juvenile liaison officer, the new legislation goes a step further. It offers victims a chance to explain how the crime has affected them; it also offers offenders the chance to apologise and, somehow, to try to put things right.

"In most cases, the benefit for the victim, apart from being able to tell their story, is that they go away knowing that they were not singled out for attack," says Superintendent Vincent Maguire, director of the juvenile diversion programme.

"Many people are traumatised by crimes committed against them because they think they have been targeted in some way, which is very rarely the case. And for young offenders, meeting the victim makes a huge impression because often, in their minds, what they had offended against was an abstract thing. Now they have suddenly come to realise that they have hurt another human being."

The offender usually apologises and promises not to repeat the offence, and may offer financial compensation or some other form of reparation. An agreement is drawn up and signed by all parties, and the offender is subject to continued supervision.

Restorative justice is a radical concept in the current, mostly retributive criminal-justice system. Retributive justice defines crime as a violation of the law and sees the State as the victim: the aim of justice is to establish guilt and administer punishment. A restorative model of justice defines crime as a violation of interpersonal relationships; restorative justice, therefore, aspires to heal relationships by bringing people together non-confrontationally.

One striking case involved youths who were throwing bricks through the windows of a school. At the conference, they learned it was actually a crèche for deprived children and heard teachers express their despair at the vandalism - every time the windows were broken, they had to throw out much of their equipment, especially soft toys, which might contain shards of glass. The windows didn't get broken again; in fact, the offenders volunteered to paint pictures to help cheer the place up. In another instance, an offender who had damaged a neighbour's property ended up mowing his lawn when the neighbour went on holiday.

Although it may be legally innovative, the round-table approach to juvenile crime is one many Native Americans would recognise, as would any native of Ireland under the Brehon law system of pre-Norman times. It is also widely practised by the Maoris and has made inroads into the mainstream youth-justice system in New Zealand, where most juvenile cases are now handled in this way.

New Zealand and Australia pioneered the process because of dissatisfaction with the methods of dealing with juvenile crime they inherited from the British legal system, according to Geoffrey Shannon, a solicitor who specialises in child law and sits on the Commission on European Family Law. "They just didn't work; in fact, the more draconian the response to juvenile crime issues generally, the greater the exponential increase in the crime figures tends to be. Instead of locking kids up wholesale, they looked around for a more effective method. Scandinavian countries have adopted a similar model, and it has paid off hugely in terms of lower crime figures." So much for the theory. But how does it work in Ireland, where we're not noted for coolness under pressure? Don't things boil over and result in angry exchanges?

"Part of restorative justice's strength is that it taps into emotions, in contrast to the more dispassionate discourse in a court setting. Anger and aggression featured in several cases but were dissipated in all but the least successful cases. Angry remarks were just as likely to come from the offender's own family as the victim's side," writes Kieran O'Dwyer, head of the garda research unit at Templemore, Co Tipperary, in the evaluation of the pilot scheme. O'Dwyer sat in on many victim-offender conferences.

"It isn't for everybody, it isn't a panacea and not every case is a success," he says. "But the strength of this process is that people are given time to talk things through. They hear everything first hand, and it's in their own words, it's not parsed and analysed by professionals. So it has a strong personal impact."

Strong personal impact, in fact, is what the restorative-justice conference is all about - and if it is to work, it demands much skill from the conference facilitator, usually a juvenile liaison officer trained in mediation techniques. It also demands time - about 12 hours a case, adding to the workload of already overstretched juvenile liaison officers. But as Inspector Finbarr Murphy, the garda responsible for the restorative-justice programme, points out, one of the reasons the scheme has worked so well in Ireland is that the officers have brought a wealth of experience and sensitivity to the process.

"All juvenile liaison officers are currently undergoing mediation training, but in practice JLOs have been doing this sort of work for years, going into people's houses, negotiating, calming, making sure the offender can put the offence behind them and get on with their life. What is new about the restorative caution is that it adds in the voice of the victim - and all the signs are that this is a major step forward."

At least a case a week is being handled under the restorative-justice programme. Too few, say critics, who also point to the relatively minor nature of the cases, which are to do with vandalism, shoplifting, assault and alcohol, although whether you regard a crime as minor may depend on whether you have been at its receiving end. Several of the cases in O'Dwyer's report are assaults where bones have been broken: serious, surely, by any standard.

As juvenile liaison officers meet this week to discuss the future of the programme, it would be easy to dismiss the initiative as a drop in the ocean. But in a society that numbers youthful aggression and the breakdown of community values among its most pressing problems, a drop of oil on waters that are clearly deeply troubled might be a precious drop indeed.

The mother of one Dublin boy who was attacked by a group of teenagers near his home is prepared to tell her story but does not want to be identified, as her son and his attackers have put the incident behind them and are getting on with their lives.

"Our 16-year-old son was set upon one night by a group of other teenagers. You can imagine the shock we got when he came in and he looked . . . well, his face was swollen and he looked fairly battered.

"To see that, as a parent, is awful. I remember being so, so shocked that somebody would want to inflict such harm on my son.

"The thing was, we didn't want to prosecute. We live in a small area and itwas embarrassing, in that we knew the parents of the children concerned.

"My husband and I were OK with the idea of the restorative caution and the open forum, where everyone would get together, but bringing your child into that group situation is another matter.

"We also felt awkward, in that we were the ones who were saying, you know, look what you've done. You don't want to be pointing the finger.

"But on the other hand, when the kids had to sit down and actually hear, one by one, the effect of this on us as a family, as well as the effect on our son, all the turmoil and different emotions he went through, I think it made it much more real. Very difficult for the other lads but certainly more real.

"They appeared to be very remorseful, and their poor parents were absolutely ashamed. Mortified. I felt nothing but sympathy for them; they were so shocked that their kids could have been involved in something like this.

"When it was all over there was a sense of closure, there was a sense of remorse and there was a sense of forgiveness.

"It all sounds very tidy. That's not to say it wasn't difficult. Sitting in the room with everybody was very difficult. But from our point of view the overall experience was positive - and I don't think it has left any permanent scars on our son.

"Of course, if he had been very seriously injured or left with a permanent handicap or something like that, who knows? Situations like that are always going to be harder to deal with."