Big interview: Put justice before violence

Youth justice in Northern Ireland has to face some unique and unenviable hurdles. "The police have never been well accepted in republican areas - the alternative is for the communities to go to paramilitaries who exact their own version of justice, often against young people," says Bill Lockhart, who has been chief executive of The Youth Justice Agency of Northern Ireland since June this year.

Lockhart hopes that the devolution of the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland, which has been agreed by the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein, will "diminish the need for paramilitaries and will mean more referrals for youth conferencing instead". The Youth Conference Service is the agency's flagship restorative justice scheme, helping Lockhart and his team to balance the needs of young people against those of the community and victims. The agency itself, which is responsible for young offenders aged 10 to 16, is fairly new, having launched in April 2003, with a budget of about 12m from the Northern Ireland Office.