Youth justice conferencing and reoffending

Abstract

The literature on restorative justice and reoffending consists largely of comparative analyses of traditional and restorative interventions and suggests small but significant differences or no differences in reoffending. We gathered data from conferencing observations and police records to explore the variable effects of conference dynamics and offenders' characteristics in predicting future offending. We found that youthful offenders who were observed to be remorseful and whose outcomes were reached by consensus were less likely to reoffend. This finding suggests that when attention is focused on the benefits of conferencing, it is possible to identify elements of conferences that are associated with reductions in crime.