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An assessment of the potential outcomes in practising restorative justice in criminal settings in Australia and the United States: a systematic review and meta-analysis
... As with the forcible implementation of a punitive justice system, there is concern that the flagrant adoption of a restorative justice system could be lost in translation and result in negative consequences. In the discourse of restorative justice studies, reviewing the application of restorative justice in other nations can provide valuable insights into both their successes and failures (Umbreit, Coates, & Vos, 2002); (Ismawansa, Ablisar, & Syahrin, 2022); (Islam, Li, & Anderson, 2023). Unfortunately, there is a lack of literatures that specifically compares Indonesia's implementation of restorative justice to that of other countries. ...
Restorative justice is a growing justice concept being adopted worldwide. The Indonesian National Police and Attorney General have created regulations to ensure legal certainty of its application. However, their implementation has faced a number of impediments. Scotland has been making similar efforts to adopt restorative justice practices. Meanwhile, the implementation of this initiative is supported not just by legislative provisions but also by a thorough action plan. As a result, this study compares Indonesia's progress towards the adoption of restorative justice to Scotland's ongoing efforts in the same arena. This research uses qualitative methodology involving literature review, examination of socio-legal phenomena, and inductive reasoning to draw conclusions. The study's findings show that both Indonesia's police-led conferencing and Scotland's practitioner-led conferencing have advantages and drawbacks. However, Scotland's restorative justice has more involvement in community reconciliation after the conference than Indonesia's pursuit of crime clearance. Furthermore, while both jurisdictions show favourable support in the implementation of restorative justice, Indonesia emphasises macro-level criminal policy and resource conservation, while Scotland emphasises micro-level results like fewer re-offending and victim satisfaction.
This Campbell systematic review examines the effectiveness of face‐to‐face restorative justice conferences (‘RJCs’) on repeat offending and victim satisfaction. The systematic review includes 10 studies.
The average effect of the ten studies indicated that face‐to‐face RJCs resulted in offenders committing significantly less crime than their counterparts randomly assigned to standard criminal justice alone. The effect of RJCs on violent crime is larger than its effects on property crime.
For victims, again comparing those whose cases were assigned to RJCs with those assigned to standard criminal justice, those taking part in face‐to‐face RJCs express higher levels of satisfaction with the handling of their cases, are more likely to receive an apology from offenders and rate these apologies as sincere, be less inclined to want to seek revenge, and suffer less from post traumatic stress symptoms.
Synopsis/Abstract
OBJECTIVE
This systematic review examines the effects of the subset of restorative justice programs that has been tested most extensively: a face‐to‐face Restorative Justice Conference (RJC) “that brings together offenders, their victims, and their respective kin and communities, in order to decide what the offender should do to repair the harm that a crime has caused” (Sherman and Strang, 2012: 216). The Review investigates the effects of RJCs on offenders' subsequent convictions (or in one case arrests) for crime, and on several measures of victim impact. The review considers only randomized controlled trials in which victim and offenders consented to meet prior to random assignment, the analysis of which was based on the results of an “intention‐to‐treat” analysis. A total of ten experiments with recidivism outcomes were found that met the eligibility criteria, all of which also had at least one victim impact measure.
CONCLUSIONS
Our synthesis of these experiments shows that, on average, RJCs cause a modest but highly cost‐effective reduction in repeat offending, with substantial benefits for victims. A cost‐effectiveness estimate for the seven United Kingdom (UK) experiments found a ratio of 8 times more benefit in costs of crimes prevented than the cost of delivering RJCs.
Executive Summary
BACKGROUND
“Restorative justice” is a concept denoting a wide range of justice practices with common values, but widely varying procedures (Braithwaite, 2002). These values encourage offenders to take responsibility for their actions and to repair the harms they have caused, usually (although not always) in communication with their personal victims. This review focuses on the subset of restorative justice procedures that has been tested most carefully and extensively: face‐to‐face restorative justice conferencing (RJC). In these conferences, victims and offenders involved in a crime meet in the presence of a trained facilitator with their families and friends or others affected by the crime, to discuss and resolve the offense and its consequences.
OBJECTIVES
The reviewers sought to assess the effect of face‐to‐face restorative justice conferencing on repeat offending and on available measures of victim impact.
SEARCH STRATEGY
To identify studies eligible for inclusion in the review, 15 electronic databases were searched, including: Criminal Justice Abstracts, Dissertation Abstracts, NCJRS, PsychInfo, and Sociological Abstracts. Reviews of the effects of restorative justice on repeat offending and victims' satisfaction with the handling of their cases were examined for references. Experts in the field were contacted.
SELECTION CRITERIA
The review includes only studies that employed a randomized design to test the effects of conferencing between at least one personal victim and one or more of their offenders on repeat offending or on victim impact, with the random assignment following both offenders' and victims' consent to participate in an RJC if selected to do so. Ten eligible studies on three continents were identified, with a total of 1,879 offenders and 734 interviewed victims. The training for the RJC facilitators was provided by the same trainer in all ten trials, but that was not a criterion for selection. Cases were referred to the eligible experiments at various stages of the criminal justice process, including diversion from prosecution, post‐conviction RCJs prior to sentencing, and post‐sentencing RJCs in prison and probation. The eligible tests included both violent and property crime, as well as youth and adult crime, with RJCs offered as an alternative or as a supplement to prosecution in court. These variations provide a basis for moderator analyses as well as main effects on subsequent convictions (or in one case, arrests).
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
The reviewers report the results of the ten eligible experiments identified. These experiments all reported post treatment data only of repeat crime measures at two years after random assignment (the only measurement period of offending common to the ten eligible trials). Measures for victim impact were also post‐treatment, as measured by personal interviews with subsets of all victims who consented to random assignment.
All data analyses included in this review examined the effects of Intention‐To‐Treat (ITT), with wide variations in the percentage of both RJC and control cases receiving treatment as assigned. Many offenders assigned to prosecution, for example, failed to appear in court, just as many offenders assigned to an RJC failed to complete one. The analysis employs the ITT method to provide estimates of effectiveness under real‐world conditions, at the expense of likely under‐estimates of the efficacy of RJCs when actually delivered. All studies reported effects on individual offenders and victims, while in all cases random assignment was done at the case level. In most trials the ratio of cases to offenders or victims was 1:1, while in others (the two Canberra experiments) that ratio ranged up to 1:1.25.
RESULTS
The evidence of a relationship between conferencing and subsequent convictions or arrests over two years post‐random assignment is clear and compelling, with nine out of 10 results in the predicted direction and a standardized mean difference for the ten experiments combined (Cohen's d = ‐.155; p = .001). The impact of RJCs on 2‐year convictions was reported to be cost‐effective in the 7 UK experiments, with up to 14 times as much benefit in costs of the crimes prevented (in London), and 8 times overall, as the cost of delivering RJCs. The effect of conferencing on victims' satisfaction with the handling of their cases is uniformly positive (d = .327; p<.05), as are several other measures of victim impact.
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
RJCs delivered in the manner tested by the ten eligible tests in this review appear likely to reduce future detected crimes among the kinds of offenders who are willing to consent to RJCs, and whose victims are also willing to consent. The condition of consent is crucial not just to the research, but also to the aim of its generalizability. The operational basis of holding such conferences at all depends upon consent, since RJCs without consent are arguably unethical and breach accepted principles of restorative justice. The conclusions are appropriately limited to the kinds of cases in which RJCs would be ethical and appropriate. Among the kinds of cases in which both offenders and victims are willing to meet, RJCs seem likely to reduce future crime. Victims' satisfaction with the handling of their cases is consistently higher for victims assigned to RJCs than for victims whose cases were assigned to normal criminal justice processing.
Now is the time to rethink reliance on legal intervention to end intimate partner violence (IPV). Arrest, incarceration, and family separation have fallen disproportionately on people who are Black or Brown, impoverished, or immigrant, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ). Restorative approaches bring together the persons harmed, persons causing harm, their family or community networks, or combinations of these stakeholders. Based on a U.S. national study, this article examines: What influences programs to adopt a restorative approach to ending IPV? How do programs safeguard their original vision for social change? What principles guide the programs in carrying out their work in safe and productive ways?
Since interpersonal forgiveness has been considered a 'gift' that should not be forced on victims in restorative justice (RJ), the role of forgiveness in RJ remains peripheral. In this paper, we aim to advance the role of forgiveness in RJ. However, we do not focus on interpersonal forgiveness. We instead focus on another dimension of forgiveness: self-forgiveness for offenders. Because self-forgiveness is linked with both RJ and desistance respectively, self-forgiveness has the potential to function as a catalyst to connect RJ with desistance. Drawing on their relationship, we offer a process-based model of how offenders may or may not desist through RJ. We conclude with offering implications for research on RJ.
Restorative justice is regarded in modern criminal justice systems as one approach to address inadequacies in the conventional justice model. New Zealand has become a leader in implementing legislatively mandated restorative procedures. This reputation is due in part to a handful of supportive statutes: the Sentencing Act 2002, the Victims’ Rights Act 2002, the Parole Act 2002, the Corrections Act 2004 and subsequent amendments to those acts. In this article, I evaluate the practices bolstered by these acts and how effectively they operate, accounting for how legislative design may contribute to achievements and shortcomings in New Zealand's restorative justice programmes. I supplement the results by comparing New Zealand's efforts to those in Vermont, a U.S. state similarly well-regarded for its restorative policies. The evaluation of each jurisdiction's restorative justice programme is based on metrics for restorative success from Bazemore and Schiff (2005. Juvenile justice reform and restorative justice: building theory and policy from practice. Cullompton: Willan Publishing). I employ qualitative and quantitative data, surveying existing evaluations of restorative justice in New Zealand and Vermont, collecting longitudinal statistics, and conducting interviews with restorative justice practitioners. Overall, this analysis reveals that the design of restorative justice programmes requires negotiation; it is difficult to balance the dimensions of effective restorative justice with the needs of modern justice systems.
Recent innovation in domestic violence (DV) treatment suggests that when a batterer intervention programme (BIP) is combined with clinical elements, including motivational or readiness to change strategies, subsequent incidents of violence can be reduced. Prompted by previous research on restorative justice in reducing recidivism in crimes other than DV, a randomized controlled trial in Utah, USA, compared a typical BIP with one that included restorative justice-informed treatment, called circles of peace (CP). The findings reveal that the ‘hybrid’ BIP-plus-CP resulted in statistically significant reductions in both new arrests (53%) and crime severity scores (52%) for all offences, including DV, over a 24-month period. We conclude that a hybrid BIP-plus-CP programme should be considered as a viable treatment option for DV offenders. Implications for DV victims are discussed, as are the study’s limitations, including the fact that some elements typical of restorative justice programmes could not be attained in this DV context.
Previous research suggests that participation in victim–offender mediation (VOM) can lower the risk of reoffending. However, no randomized controlled trials have been done to examine this effect of VOM. Given that participation in VOM is voluntary, previous studies likely suffer from self-selection bias. To address this bias, we compared reoffending rates of three different offender groups: offenders who participated in VOM; offenders who were willing to participate, but whose counterpart declined VOM; and offenders unwilling to participate (total N = 1,275). Results replicated that participation in VOM predicts lower reoffending rates and suggested that this effect is not solely due to a self-selection bias. Suggestions are made for future research to examine why VOM causes lower reoffending rates.
Halt is a Dutch organisation with a national network of offices which aims to prevent and combat juvenile crime. The crime prevention activities of Halt consist of advisory services, educational programmes and the development and implementation of crime prevention projects. The activities are carried out at local and regional levels. Halt is responsible for the enforcement of alternative sanctions / punishment given to young people up to the age of 18.
This research investigated the effectiveness of a brief Restorative Justice Intervention. Probationers who attended a Restorative Justice Intervention (n = 383) were compared with probationers receiving treatment as usual (n = 130) over a 2- to 6-year follow-up period. The proportion of individuals who recidivated in the control condition (n = 89, 68.46%) were higher compared with those who recidivated in the intervention condition (n = 127, 33.16%; z = 7.04, p < .001). In addition, among those who recidivated, those in the intervention condition did so less frequently. Qualitative analyses from a postintervention course evaluation given only to the intervention condition showed that 50% of probationers acknowledged an empathic understanding associated with participation. This brief intervention has a positive multilevel impact on restorative justice. Implications of these effects are discussed.
Objectives
This study evaluates the effectiveness of Minnesota Circles of Support and Accountability (MnCOSA), a sex offender reentry program implemented by the Minnesota Department of Corrections in 2008.
Methods
Using a randomized controlled trial, this study compares recidivism and cost–benefit outcomes among sex offenders in the MnCOSA (N = 50) and control groups (N = 50).
Results
The results suggest MnCOSA significantly reduced sexual recidivism, lowering the risk of rearrest for a new sex offense by 88%. In addition, MnCOSA significantly decreased all four measures of general recidivism, with reductions ranging in size from 49 to 57%. As a result of the reduction in recidivism, findings from the cost–benefit analysis reveal the program has generated an estimated 40,923 per participant. For every dollar spent on MnCOSA, the program has yielded an estimated benefit of $3.73.
Conclusions
Although difficult to implement, the CoSA model is a cost-effective intervention for sex offenders that could also be applied to other correctional populations with a high risk of violent recidivism.
Existing reviews of the impact of restorative justice programs on juvenile recidivism have reached mixed conclusions. The present meta-analysis identified relevant studies through a systematic search of 20 databases over a 25-year period as well as the ancestry method. Application of inclusion criteria resulted in a set of 21 studies contributing 21 independent effect sizes. Programs were found to be overall effective at reducing recidivism, with a pooled odds ratio of 1.28. Subgroup analyses indicate strong evidence that study and treatment characteristics play a role in evaluation results, such as strength of research design and racial/ethnic mix of program participants. Overall quality of the literature is relatively weak, with the large majority of studies derived from non-peer-reviewed sources and a lack of detail presented on treatment characteristics. Limitations with respect to exclusion criteria, sample sizes, and between-study heterogeneity are discussed.
Objectives
We conducted and measured outcomes from the Jerry Lee Program of 12 randomized trials over two decades in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK), testing an identical method of restorative justice taught by the same trainers to hundreds of police officers and others who delivered it to 2231 offenders and 1179 victims in 1995–2004. The article provides a review of the scientific progress and policy effects of the program, as described in 75 publications and papers arising from it, including previously unpublished results of our ongoing analyses.
Methods
After random assignment in four Australian tests diverting criminal or juvenile cases from prosecution to restorative justice conferences (RJCs), and eight UK tests of supplementing criminal or juvenile proceedings with RJCs, we followed intention-to-treat group differences between offenders for up to 18 years, and for victims up to 10 years.
Results
We distil and modify prior research reports into 18 updated evidence-based conclusions about the effects of RJCs on both victims and offenders. Initial reductions in repeat offending among offenders assigned to RJCs (compared to controls) were found in 10 of our 12 tests. Nine of the ten successes were for crimes with personal victims who participated in the RJCs, with clear benefits in both short- and long-term measures, including less prevalence of post-traumatic stress symptoms. Moderator effects across and within experiments showed that RJCs work best for the most frequent and serious offenders for repeat offending outcomes, with other clear moderator effects for poly-drug use and offense seriousness.
Conclusions
RJ conferences organized and led (most often) by specially-trained police produced substantial short-term, and some long-term, benefits for both crime victims and their offenders, across a range of offense types and stages of the criminal justice processes on two continents, but with important moderator effects. These conclusions are made possible by testing a new kind of justice on a programmatic basis that would allow prospective meta-analysis, rather than doing one experiment at a time. This finding provides evidence that funding agencies could get far more evidence for the same cost from programs of identical, but multiple, RCTs of the identical innovative methods, rather than funding one RCT at a time.
Prior research has suggested that family group conferences (FGCs), a particular form of restorative justice, hold promise in reducing reoffending among youths, at least for some types of offenses. Most prior research, however, has simply assessed whether participation in a FGC resulted in reduced rates of reoffending compared with control or comparison groups in court or diversion programs. These prior recidivism studies have largely left unaddressed the characteristics of the FGCs that may produce differences in reoffending. The exceptions are two studies, from New Zealand and Australia, respectively, that relied on variation analyses to assess whether differences in the FGC processes affected future offending. This research builds on these two studies and tests as to whether FGC characteristics derived from reintegrative shaming, procedural justice, and defiance theory account for variations in reoffending. The data have been obtained from a sample of youths (N = 215) who participated in a FGC as part of the Indianapolis Juvenile Restorative Justice Experiment (IJRJE). The findings suggest that the more the FGC appeared to follow principles of restorativeness and procedural fairness and avoided defiance, the less reoffending occurred. Specifically, offense type and conference restorativeness influenced the probability of recidivism at 6 months, whereas offense type and race influenced the probability of recidivism at 24 months.
Objectives This paper synthesizes the effects on repeat offending reported in ten eligible randomized trials of face-to-face restorative justice conferences (RJCs) between crime victims, their accused or convicted offenders, and their respective kin and communities. Methods After an exhaustive search strategy that examined 519 studies that could have been eligible for our rigorous inclusion criteria, we found ten that did. Included studies measured recidivism by 2 years of convictions after random assignment of 1,880 accused or convicted offenders who had consented to meet their consenting victims prior to random assignment, based on “intention-to-treat” analysis. Results Our meta-analysis found that, on average, RJCs cause a modest but highly cost-effective reduction in the frequency of repeat offending by the consenting offenders randomly assigned to participate in such a conference. A cost-effectiveness estimate for the seven United Kingdom experiments found a ratio of 3.7-8.1 times more benefit in cost of crimes prevented than the cost of delivering RJCs. Conclusion RJCs are a cost-effective means of reducing frequency of recidivism.
Restorative justice is a relatively new approach to crime response, developing in the U.S. since the 1970s. Over the past three decades, these practices have been incorporated into legislation. Using content analysis of statutes in state criminal and juvenile codes, this study asks how restorative justice has been translated into law. The authors find that 32 states now have statutory support for the use of restorative justice, and that legislation ranges widely from general statements of support to structured use of restorative practices in at least some instances and for some offenders. Implications for practitioners, policy makers, and scholars are suggested.
Restorative justice is an alternative paradigm for dealing with the effects of crime and wrongdoing that seeks to bring healing to victims, offenders, and the community. Although a key element of social work’s ethical code is the obligation to work toward social justice, this has been viewed primarily as efforts to ensure a fair distribution of resources and opportunities. Yet justice is also restorative in nature—seeking to restore and enhance victims, offenders, and communities to fuller functioning. This article systematically reviews 80 social work peer-reviewed articles dealing with restorative justice. The role of social workers in restorative justice programs remains largely unknown. Suggestions are made for enhancing social work practice in the restorative justice arena.
Our aim was to determine the overall rates of general and sexual re-offending of youth (i.e. aged under 18 at the time of offence) charged with sexual offences, ranging from indecent exposure to rape, over 6.5 years in South Australia and whose cases were finalised in court, by conference and by formal caution (N = 365). Controlling for previous offending, we examined if re-offending varied by site of finalisation or by referral to Mary Street, a specialist treatment program. Follow-up times ranged from six to 84 months. We applied a parametric form of survival analysis by fitting the Weibull ‘mixture model’ to the Kaplan-Meier cumulative distribution of failure times (time to re-offend). Covariates, such as prior offending or referral to Mary Street, were introduced to test for differences in survival rates, immune proportions or both between groups. By the cut-off date, 54% of youth had been charged with new non-sexual offences but only 9% with new sexual offences. Court youth had a higher rate of re-offending than conference youth, but these differences were largely explained by prior offending. For the subgroup with no previous offending, however, a significantly slower rate of re-offending was observed for conference youth and for those who were referred to Mary Street. We were able to control for the main effect of prior offending, but complex interactions between co-variates such as offence types, early admissions to offending and legal and therapeutic responses could not be disentangled in our small sample, and we could not explore factors linked specifically to sexual re-offending. Future research should examine the enmeshment of key factors that set youth on differing legal pathways; this phenomenon affects studies comparing conference and court outcomes, whether in naturalistic settings or in randomised field experiments.
Objectives
The purpose of the current study is to test the long-term effect of Family Group Conferences (FGCs) on recidivism prevalence and time to first re-offense for first-time youthful offenders.
Methods
The current study builds on an experiment with a reasonably large sample (n = 782) conducted in Marion County (Indianapolis), Indiana, USA. The current study extends this work by following the cases for an additional 10 years. To examine the empirical relationships among the variables, this study employs a two-step approach. The initial analysis, employing logistic regression, measures prevalence of re-offending based on whether the youth ever was re-arrested during the follow-up period. The second step employs Cox Proportional-Hazards Regression to examine time until first re-offense.
Results
The findings revealed that when extended to a 12-year follow-up period, there were no significant differences between the FGC and control groups in re-offending prevalence or time to re-offense.
Conclusions
An earlier study suggests that treatment group youths experienced reduced risk in the short-term and there is no evidence in the present study to suggest that youths participating in FGCs were placed at greater risk for re-offending. Given these findings and the body of research suggesting improved outcomes for victims, continued experimentation with FGCs and related restorative processes seems warranted. Future studies would benefit from blocking procedures in the experimental design in order to examine whether treatment effects are moderated by gender, race, and initial type of offense. The lack of such blocking procedures represents a limitation of the current study.
This article discusses issues that restorative justice programs may face during implementation and lessons learned from an exploratory study. We examined various perspectives of multiple participants who experienced a Victim-Offender Mediation (VOM) program in a mid-sized Midwestern city in the U.S. The primary data source comprised 34 interviews with 37 participants including adult crime victims, juvenile offenders and their parents, mediators, and representatives from referring agencies. Observations complemented the interview data. Findings revealed patterns of victim marginalization during the processes used: victims were not prepared appropriately; were at times pressured by mediators to behave in certain ways; and, occasionally felt intimidated by offenders and/or their families. We discuss some factors that may have influenced the emergence of these patterns. This study revealed gaps between the guiding principles of restorative justice theory and field practices, particularly sensitivity toward victims to meet their needs. We suggest that restorative justice programs should consider using a monitoring system to ensure that the processes used remain consistent with the values and principles of restorative justice.
A small but growing number of jurisdictions across the U.S. offer victims of severe violence, including homicide, the opportunity to meet in a mediated dialogue session with their offender if they so desire. Such meetings are victim initiated and involve extensive preparation of the parties. This article reports on an intensive qualitative five-year study of mediated dialogue participants in two of the first states in the U.S. to do so, Texas and Ohio. Descriptions of the two programs and key characteristics of participants are provided, along with outcome data related to the experience of both crime victims and offenders in mediated dialogue in the context of severely violent crime.
The inter-rater reliability of reintegrative shaming (Braithwaite 1989) concepts was tested at Community Accountability Conferences and at court using two observation methods. This paper presents data collected from 45 cases: 15 violence or property-related conferences; 15 drink-drive conferences; and a mix of 15 drink-drive, property-related, and violence-related court cases. The results, which are a synthesis of those presented in a more extensive report (Harris & Burton 1997), show that components of reintegrative shaming theory can be observed reliably using systematic observation and global rating observation methods.
Objective: This article reports the results of a meta-analytic study of the relationship between participation in victim- offender mediation (VOM) and the prevalence of subsequent delinquent behavior. Method: Analyses were conducted with the results of 15 studies, conducted at 19 different sites, with a sample of 9,307 juveniles. Results: The results sug- gested that methodological factors explained all the significant variation across sites and studies in the magnitude of the difference between non-VOM and VOM groups in their reoffense prevalence. The odds of VOM participants were only about .70 as great as the odds of nonparticipants reoffending. Conclusion: The results support the efforts of social workers to advocate for, develop, and participate in VOM programs.
Despite claims that restorative justice is “victim centered,” and deliberately focused on healing harms to victims, some studies report that particular applications of restorative justice may not be fully consistent with its fundamental principles and values. Under such circumstances these programs may focus on outcomes (e.g., rehabilitation of youthful offenders) rather than process, and in doing so, may fail to identify and respond effectively to victims' needs. To take a closer look at this phenomenon, this article examines a sample of published restorative justice studies that highlight ‘negative’ experiences of victims. Given a number of studies that indicate victims typically have satisfying experiences in restorative justice practices such reports of negative experiences and practices should be viewed as ‘outliers.’ However, such outliers may provide substantively meaningful insights that inform best practice standard for restorative justice. Implications are drawn for the use of restorative justice practices for youth justice.
The social benefits of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) would be enhanced by general recognition of three problems of their interpretation and a redefinition of their mission in relation to program development and evaluation. One problem is that of “forest versus trees,” or the sampling relationship between each test of a hypothesis and the conclusions drawn from all such tests taken together. A second problem is interpreting RCTs as testing theory or policy when they cannot achieve a high correlation between the treatments assigned and treatments actually applied in each case. The third problem is what works for whom, or whether identical treatments cause different effects, on average, for different kinds of people, groups, situations, or other units of analysis that were different at the point of random assignment. Confronting these three problems suggests that RCTs should not only seek verdicts about what works but also should seek better inventions of crime prevention programs for further testing.
Restorative justice has become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional applications of criminal justice. The emphasis on victim needs and the personalizing of conflict resolution offers an attractive choice for those dissatisfied with the adversarial, impersonal, and retributive focus of the present criminal justice system. Many evaluations of restorative justice programs, especially those with a diversion goal, have rarely controlled for the possibility of net widening and the influence of offender risk on recidivism. This evaluation examined a prison diversion program that followed restorative justice principles. Using a matched comparison group and controlling for offender risk, the program demonstrated a diversion effect and a significant reduction in offender recidivism. The results are encouraging for jurisdictions experimenting with this new approach to justice and seeking a more integrated role for victims in criminal justice processing.
This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated whether problem-solving court interventions that employed judicial supervision were more effective in reducing recidivism and improving well-being outcomes for offenders compared with conventional justice processes. More than 11,000 records were collected via a three-phase search strategy that identified 56 independent investigations that included 11,146 treatment and 12,091 comparison subjects. A total of 68 outcomes were assessed for risk of bias, with the majority (59.67%) rated ‘critical’ overall. A subset of recidivism outcomes (k = 22) that were included in a synthesis of relative incident rate ratios revealed a significant reduction in rearrests from pre-treatment to post-treatment among problem-solving court interventions as compared with treatment-as-usual processes. However, there was a high degree of unexplained heterogeneity observed among studies. An analysis of moderators revealed that mental health courts possessed larger treatment effects than both drug courts and driving while intoxicated courts, court programs that reported individualized treatment had greater effects than those that did not, and stronger treatment effects were found among programs that required frequent judicial supervision in the initial phases of treatment. More rigorous investigations, with detailed descriptions of treatment programs, are needed to better explain the sources of variance between and within court formats.
The full report can be downloaded from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research website: https://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Pages/bocsar_publication/Pub_Summary/CJB/CJB226-Circle-Sentencing-Summary.aspx
Research suggests that offenders perceive restorative justice (RJ) conferences as more just and reintegrative than standard court proceedings. Yet, little research focuses on how the nature of the offense may affect these social psychological processes, and studies that investigate how offenders perceive justice typically examine justice in general, not specific types (procedural vs. interactional). Using data from the Australian Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE), we find that offense type is differentially associated with types of justice and shaming perceptions, demonstrating the need to distinguish between interactional and procedural justice to understand how various offenders experience the RJ conference.
The Australian National University and Australian Institute of Criminology were commissioned by the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Justice and Community Safety Directorate to undertake an impact evaluation of the restorative justice conferencing program. There were two components to this evaluation. The first involved the analysis of surveys of offenders, victims and their support persons conducted by the Restorative Justice (RJ) Unit following each conference. The second involved using criminal history data provided by ACT Policing to conduct an analysis of reoffending among the 1,143 participants in restorative justice conferencing (RJC) compared with 4,668 young offenders dealt with at the same time through the normal process, whose criminal history had been tracked until September 2016.
Analysis of the surveys completed by conference participants show that the majority of victims, victim support persons, offenders and offender support persons were satisfied with the conference process and outcome of the conference. Overall, 93% of all conference participants (victims, offenders, and supporters) reported being pleased with the outcome of their conference, and between 97 and 99% of all participants and felt treated with respect, able to say what they wanted as part of the process, that the process was fair for them and the offender, and that their rights had been respected.
To measure the impact RJC on reoffending, various statistical methods were used to estimate recidivism. These methods compared the proportion of RJC participants who re-offended with a comparison group of young offenders who had not been referred to the program. Apart from estimating the proportion of offenders who re-offended (defined here as re-arrest), and the time taken to reoffend, the frequency of reoffending (i.e. the number of charges or offences) was also measured.
The RJC participants were more likely to be male, younger, charged with a violent or property offence, and with a more extensive criminal history than non-participants—factors known to increase the risk of reoffending. The raw percent re-arrested by the cut-off date (September 2016) was 55.9% of the RJC participants and 45.4% of the non-RJC group. After adjusting for differences in follow up time (i.e. a maximum follow up of 12 years and a median follow-up of approximately 7 years) an estimated 61% of RJC participants and 49% of non-participants would be expected to be re-apprehended for at least one offence.
However, RJC participants are less likely to reoffend or to reoffend as often as non-participants when differences between them were controlled in either a conventional multivariate model or a matched case analysis. Both approaches produced similar results overall. The multivariate method estimated a 23% reduction and the matched case method a 30% reduction in the frequency of re-offending. The multivariate regression showed RJC participants were significantly less likely to reoffend after the reference episode, although the positive impact of the RJC process appears to decay over time.
An intervention effect is also evident when matched groups of juvenile offenders are compared—RJC participants take significantly longer to reoffend and accumulate fewer offences. The proportion estimated to reoffend after 12 months was 20% for RJC participants and 29% for the matched comparison group, after five years about 47% of both RJ and non-RJ had re-offended, but after ten years, 54% of RJC participants compared to 64% of non-participants would be expected to be re-apprehended for at least one offence. The frequency of offending in the follow-up period was also more pronounced at 30% lower for offenders who participated in a RJC compared with a matched group of offenders dealt with by a court or by police using another disposition.
The positive RJC intervention effect is further confirmed in a factorial analysis of the risks of recidivism, with lower risks of recidivism identified for specific sub-groups of offenders engaged in the RJC process: for example, property offenders with a prior record had significantly lower recidivism and took longer to re-offend after participation in RJC than those that did not. First time violent offenders also had significantly lower recidivism risks post RJC than those who did not.
This observational study of the effects of RJC has limitations because the comparison group was not randomly assigned but matched post hoc using statistical methods or controls. Thus, some selection factors may be overlooked or unaccounted for. However, after applying a variety of analytical methods to describe this large sample of juvenile offenders we conclude that the RJC program has a positive impact on reoffending. It was not possible to draw any conclusions as to whether victims who participate in RJC are more satisfied than those whose matter is dealt with by a court or another disposition, there are very few participants who are dissatisfied with the process and outcome. The victim-centric program delivered by the Restorative Justice Unit is thus successful in delivering a generally positive experience for victims, and other conference participants.
This paper provides an overview of 40 years of victim‐offender mediation evaluation research. This research demonstrates that victims and offenders are more satisfied with the process and outcomes than with the courts, they are more likely to draft and complete restitution agreements, they derive psychosocial benefits, the process is less expensive, crime victims are more likely to receive apologies from offenders, and offenders are less likely to recidivate. These benefits are not necessarily uniformly distributed. This “first wave” research provides a platform for the second wave, currently underway. To contextualize these findings, current and future victim‐offender mediation practices are outlined.
Restorative justice conferencing is a police diversionary strategy used extensively in Australian jurisdictions to channel young offenders away from formal court processing. Advocates view conferencing as culturally appropriate and a means to reduce the overrepresentation of Indigenous young people because it is rooted in Indigenous justice traditions. However, whether conferencing is effective at reducing recidivism by Indigenous young people compared with non-Indigenous young people remains unknown. We examine this using a longitudinal cohort of youth offenders from Australia. Propensity score matching was used to match Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people at their first conference and examined reoffending outcomes to explore its efficacy at reducing recidivism (n = 394). Results indicate that, despite statistically controlling for factors related to reoffending, recidivism levels postconference were significantly higher for Indigenous young people. These results suggest that conferencing is unlikely to address the problem of Indigenous overrepresentation within Australia’s youth justice system.
Research has generally supported the effectiveness of restorative justice (RJ) programs on a number of outcomes; however, little research has examined the effectiveness of variations in the intervention. This study examined several variations of an RJ program for juvenile offenders, including direct mediation, indirect forms of victim/offender mediation accomplished without direct victim/offender contact, the use of community panels (i.e., with community representatives when no direct victim was available), and a group who received only minimal interaction with RJ staff. Results supported the effectiveness of a number of variations in program implementation. Implications for future research and potential improvements to the RJ model are discussed.
In a time of accountability, tight budgets, and closing of restorative justice programs, restorative justice practitioners and policy makers need to utilize effectiveness data to make decisions about program development and funding. Measuring the effect of restorative justice practices on recidivism is one clear way of doing so.
Criminologists and other developmental researchers have long acknowledged the importance of both continuity and change in antisocial and criminal behaviour over the life-course. To the extent that young offenders having contact with the police will persist with offending into adulthood is an important social issue with significant implications for the ongoing development and implementation of early intervention and prevention programs. Using data from New South Wales, this paper tracks a cohort of 8,797 juvenile offenders over ten years and is among the first of its kind to use multivariate techniques to examine the long-term outcomes of those who were cautioned, conferenced or convicted in that state. The study finds that just over half of all juvenile offenders were reconvicted in court of a further offence and that reconviction rates were higher for young males and Indigenous offenders than for females or non-Indigneous offenders. In concluding, this paper draws attention to the need for improved assessment and early intervention efforts that more accurately target those young people most at risk of persisting with offending into adulthood.
Agreements are key outcomes in restorative justice conferences. However, there is debate over the effectiveness of such agreements
to reduce post-conference offending. Research suggests that many young offenders are satisfied with their agreements and perceive
them as fair. We know less about the linkages between young offenders’ experiences with agreements and post-conference offending.
Drawing on observation and interview data from 32 young offenders who attended conferences, we found that nearly all young
people felt their agreements were satisfactory and fair. However, most offenders felt that the agreement phase of the conferencing
process did not have an impact on their post-conference offending behaviour. These findings further inform the debate over agreement requirements
and have policy implications for conferencing programmes.
With the commencement of the Young Offenders Act in April 1998, Youth Justice Conferencing was introduced across NSW as an alternative to a court appearance for young offenders. At a conference the young offender(s), family, victims and other supporters discuss the offending and its impact in order to encourage acceptance of responsibility by the offender, provide some form of restitution and help to reintegrate the offender back into his/her family and community. This study compares reoffending by young people who participated in a conference with reoffending by young people who attended court. The results indicate that conferencing produces a moderate reduction of up to 15 to 20 per cent in reoffending across different offence types and regardless of the gender, criminal history, age and Aboriginality of the offenders.
The article reports empirical evaluation of RESTORE, a restorative justice (RJ) conferencing program adapted to prosecutor-referred adult misdemeanor and felony sexual assaults. RESTORE conferences included voluntary enrollment, preparation, and a face-to-face meeting where primary and secondary victims voice impacts, and responsible persons acknowledge their acts and together develop a re-dress plan that is supervised for 1 year. Process data included referral and consent rates, participant characteristics, observational ratings of conferences compared with program design, services delivered, and safety monitoring. Outcome evaluation used 22 cases to assess (a) pre-post reasons for choosing RESTORE, (b) preparation and conference experiences, (c) overall program and justice satisfaction, and (d) completion rates. This is the first peer-reviewed quantitative evaluation of RJ conferencing for adult sexual assault. Although the data have limitations, the results support cautious optimism regarding feasibility, safety, and satisfactory outcomes. They help envision how conferencing could expand and individualize justice options for sexual assault.
This article provides an empirical synthesis of the existing literature on the effectiveness of restorative justice practices using meta-analytic techniques. The data were aggregated from studies that compared restorative justice programs to traditional nonrestorative approaches to criminal behavior. Victim and offender satisfaction, restitution compliance, and recidivism were selected as appropriate outcomes to adequately measure effectiveness. Although restorative programs were found to be significantly more effective, these positive findings are tempered by an important self-selection bias inherent in restorative justice research. A possible method of addressing this problem, as well as directions for future research, are provided.
This paper argues that juvenile justice policy in Australia is dominated by three key dogmas: that contact with the court system increases the risk of further offending; that restorative justice is more effective than traditional justice in reducing the risk of further offending; and that juvenile involvement in crime is for the most part transient and self-limiting. Our review of the evidence challenges each of these assumptions. In particular, we present a ten-year reconviction follow-up for 8813 young NSW offenders who had their first known police caution, conference or proven court appearance in 1999. We consider the proportion of the cohort convicted of a further offence, the proportion that ends up in custody and the average number of further offences amongst those with at least one further conviction. Our findings are inconsistent with the notion that juvenile contact with the justice system is largely transient. We discuss ways in which juvenile justice policy might be reformed if the three dogmas were abandoned and closer attention paid to the evidence on what works in reducing the risk of juvenile reoffending.
This article reports on the first cross-site analysis of victim-offender mediation programs in the United States, working with juvenile courts in Albuquerque, Austin, Minneapolis, and Oakland. A total of 1,153 interviews were conducted with victims and offenders. These included pre- and postmediation interviews and the use of two comparison groups. Court officials were interviewed and 28 observations of mediations were conducted. The vast majority of victims and offenders experienced the mediation process and outcome as fair and were quite satisfied with it. Mediation resulted in significantly greater satisfaction and perceptions of fairness for victims, as well as significantly higher restitution completion by offenders, than found in comparison groups. Some implications for juvenile justice policy are offered.
This article describes the system of youth justice adopted in New Zealand in 1989, which introduced a number of radical and innovative features including the involvement of young people, families, and victims in deciding how best to deal with the offending. The principle mechanism for achieving this is the family group conference, which replaces or supplements the Youth Court as the principle decision-making forum in most of the more serious cases. Research data are presented that indicate that, to a large extent, this new process is working well and may be having an impact on reconviction figures.
This article describes an investigation of the relationship between participation in a Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) and reoffense within a year of participation. Three research questions were investigated: (a) What are the characteristics of these antisocial children and adolescents ? (b) What relationships exist between these characteristics ? (c) Do the children and adolescents who participate in the VORP program have lower reoffense rates than those who go through the more traditional juvenile justice approach? Many of the results are consistent with previous research on antisocial children and adolescents. Results also suggest that VORP participants do have lower reoffense rates and that the differences in reoffense rates between the two approaches may depend on family size.