Restorative Justice After Goat Ledge Break-In?
In the early hours of Sunday 24th January there was a break-in at Goat Ledge café on St Leonards seafront. The image of two masked men (though no indication in itself of nefarious intent in these troubled times) trundling wheelie bins towards the pier has emerged from contemporaneous CCTV footage. If any readers can help identify them, they should inform Hastings Police.
There was an immediate and wide outpouring of emotion expressed on social media, both sympathising with the café’s popular owner Will Stevens and directing vitriol towards the thieves responsible. Will says he is grateful for the support – “like so many of the hospitality businesses in the town, we have really struggled during the pandemic, so a loss like this rubs salt in the wound, particularly when we work hard to be an affordable and welcoming spot for ALL members of the community”. But he is keen to downplay the moral outrage.
“I’ve heard on the grapevine that there’s been a spate of local burglaries over recent weeks,” he told HIP. “Not sure if it’s the same perpetrators, but I wonder if it’s to do with the extra financial squeeze caused by lockdown. I don’t know the exact statistics, but I’m conscious that Hastings still ranks very highly on the national list of most deprived towns. The number of people using food banks and claiming universal credit is increasing dramatically because of the impact of Covid. Maybe there’s a link.
“While I doubt they broke in to get money to feed their starving families, I think this theft is a manifestation of a larger problem about the widening disparity between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’; lots of people feel excluded from society, and that allows them to bury their conscience and do things like this.
“If the police do manage to catch the culprits, I would be keen to explore a ‘restorative justice’ approach, in which victims of crime are brought face to face with the perpetrators. That would be the most constructive outcome. Then we could find out the background behind their selfish action, and directly explain to them the impact it’s had on us. Who knows, they might even think about shifting their behaviour in future. If we got our stuff back AND they took a step towards reform…. everyone’s a winner!”
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