I'm going to pin my colours to the mast now and admit that I listen to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in the morning whilst getting ready for work.  The last item on todays programme was a piece about a letter that was written by a convicted burglar that was supposed to be sent to his victim.  In short he told them it was their own fault and outlined some measures they could have taken that would have reduced the chances of being targeted.  Needless to say the police didn't forwarded the letter to the victims.

The piece on the Today programme pitched Peter Hitchens, a columnist, against Lizzie Nelson, director of the Restorative Justice Council.  The permise of the debate was whether you can force a sense of remorse in a criminal.  Obviously starting with the above letter it appears you can. Nelson retorted with references to statistics that proved that it did work.  They discussed the case of a collaboration between a school and police in which people stopped for speeding outside the school were offered the choice between taking the points on their licence or going up in front of a panel of children from the school to explain their actions - I'll return to this later.

One point raised by Hitchens, and pretty much ignore by the Today programme presenter and Nelson, was that if you compare a moderately effectual system (the Restorative Justice paradigm) against an ineffectual system (the current criminal justice system in the UK) then the moderately effectual system will appear to provide good results.  I really wish they had time to explore this more as this is, I think, critical to planning the future of crime management.

Let me make an analogy.  Lets compare the current justice system to an old rust bucket of a car, the clutch has gone, the exhaust is hanging off, the heaters broken and if it's rained in the last week the headlights wont come on.  Now, I could go and find the cheapest, road worthy, replacement I can find for a hundred pounds.  Yes, it would get me on the roads again and it would get me from A to B but for how long?  The chances are that in six months I'll need to find myself another car.  In my opinion that's what Restorative Justice is, yes it may look like it's making a difference in the short term but what is the real long-term outlook?  Personally I'd rather pay a bit more and get a proper upgrade that's going to last.

So coming back to the speeders vs. school children experiment.  Will that sort of justice really work?  No!  My guess is that anyone that has exceeded the speed limit past a school is aware that they're doing it.  Those people that went before the children may have been remorseful at the time but give it a month or two and as they're rushing to get to a meeting they're running late for they'll have forgotten all about it.  This experiment was no more effective that bringing the stocks back to town squares so that criminals could have rotten fruit thrown at them.

On a final note, I'm going to prefix this with a sarcasm warning for those without a sense of humour, the only system that has proven a 100% success rate in eliminating re-offending by criminals is capital punishment.  Maybe we should propose re-introducing that?  It would elimininate re-offending and reduce the numbers of criminals in our prisions at the same time - who could argue with that?!

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In my life as an IT consultant, I spent a fair bit of time walking between clients, Guernsey isn't a big place y'know!  At the moment, there are a few big offices that are sitting empty at the moment, either because they're new and haven't been occupied yet, or because the old tenants have moved to new premises.

Each time I see one of these empty spaces I keep thinking

How cool would it be to turn that space into Guernsey's very own kick-starter factory?

Now, I don't know if there are any such places already out there in the bigger world but I think that in the current economic climate these could provide a real boost to the little guys who are the ones that could make a real difference.

My idea works something like this:  the kickstart factory would provide startup advice, access to potential investors and a creative environment for budding new entrepreneurs that have a good business idea but don't know where to start.  Basically, it would provide all the things that I feel I'm lacking for my own ideas.

I'll admit right now that I haven't got this idea fully worked out, for example how it would be funded, how I'd get the investors or advisors on board, how the kick-starter projects would pay for the services or at what point a project would need to move out of the factory - either because they're successful or they failing.

Here are a few services that I think could be provided by a kick-starter factory:

• Initial Initial advice: an hour session with an advisor for people that have an idea but don't know where to begin.
• Financial advice: for people that have an idea, maybe a business plan but need funding.  This advice could be recommendations for bank loans, access to venture capitalists or other sources of funding.
• Business management advice: initial business plans, project management, marketing, planning for business growth, kick-start factory exit planning.
• Hire-purchase of equipment: whether it be computers, soldering equipment, sewing machines, the kick-starter factory could provide the equipment and lease it back to the startup.  If the startup fails it's retained by the factory and can be used to help the next startup.
• Office/work space: for people that don't have their own useable space, the kick-start factory can provide space, electricity, internet connection, etc.

Of course, the benefits of the kick-starter factory don't just stop at what we're able to do for individuals startups.  Having an environment such as this could act as an incubator for potential new startups.  Having many creative people under one roof will provide excellent networking opportunities.  From on failed startup a new successful one could emerge thanks to ideas sharing, chats around the coffee machine, etc.

There's also no reason why it wouldn't be possible to partner with local schools.  Providing an opportunity for people thinking of leaving school to see that there is a third way.  Two often in Guernsey students leave school and either go straight into a finance job or go to university.  Some of the most successful people on the planet decided to take the third way and decided to have a go at making their own business, as a result we have Microsoft, Apple and Facebook!

The only problem now is that I have no idea where to go from here!

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