Restorative justice approaches reduce youth recidivism rates

¶ … Restorative Justice Approaches Reduce Youth Offending

Restorative justice is a new paradigm within the criminal justice, particularly in the context of youth offenders. The philosophy behind restorative justice is to consider the juvenile's interests to develop them into beneficial citizens, and it augments the principle behind juvenile justice and corrections. Restorative justice approaches provide the juvenile justice system with leniency when approaching youth offenders while at the same time holding the offenders accountable through rehabilitative approaches. The core elements of restorative justice include rehabilitating and restoring the youth offender, restoring and making restitution to the victim, and restoring the entire society. Programs employed in the restorative approaches can apply in both community correction centers and institutional treatment programs. Juvenile court and statutes aim to protect the child and not to punish them (Latimer, Dowden, & Muise, 2005).

However, juvenile justice has evolved over the centuries, and this has seen to the changes and demands for harsh sentences, but the objectives of the juvenile justice system remain to develop the youth offenders by providing them with a second opportunity in the society. Prior to mid-1800s, parents had absolute authority over the juveniles, which made them capable of punishing them to death. Even so, evolution has seen to the development of juvenile systems to eliminate the punitive approach of parents, and create a correcting approach to change juvenile delinquent behaviors. In comparison to punitive approaches, many literatures have provided evidence against punitive approaches, but supported the effectiveness of restorative approaches. One of the areas where the restorative approaches have shown effectiveness is in the reduction of recidivism rates (Bynum & Thompson, 2005).

Problem Statement

Youth crimes remain a significant social issue in many countries and societies in the globe. The involvement of youths in crime is an area where the law shows concern. Typical crime that the youth commit include rioting, gang crime, theft, robbery, and murder among many other serious and minor crimes. The problem of youth offending is complicated, and there is no single factors that can explain why the youths turn to crime because research has shown that, a combination of factors induce youth offending. Similar to other criminal problems, youth offending has adverse effects on the society. In retaliation, governments have provided approaches to deal with this youth offenders, and the approaches vary from country to country.

Some countries employ more punitive approaches, whereas, others have embraced restorative justice. After applying such approaches, there have been different outcomes. For example, studies have shown that states or countries, which employ punitive approaches to youth offenders, increase the chances of youth re-offending. This is because the youth mix with hardened criminals, or the punishments they go through, make them hardened criminals in the future. However, countries that employ restorative justice, research has shown that the approach works well in reducing youth re-offending. This is because this approach focuses on changing the youth's delinquent behavior, while making them accountable, but in a lenient manner.

Importance of this Study

Apparently, there is no single factors, which can stand accountable for inducing youth offending, but research has shown that a combination of factors induce youth offending. The factors may include poverty and bad school performance, neighborhoods and peer pressure and many other combination of factors. Punitive methods will only increase the chances of youth re-offending, and this does not help reduce the problem at hand. Instead of employing punitive approaches, it is important to try to change the youth's delinquent behavior through counseling. In addition, the youth, after perceiving that there are people who care, they will voluntarily provide information about possible factors that may have lead to criminal activities. This will make it easier to curb juvenile delinquency. Therefore, this study is important because it will provide a framework, which will help provide an insight into the effectiveness of restorative justice, in reducing youth offending.

Retributive Justice

Retributive justice, which is a punitive approach, refers to the achievement of justice through the unilateral imposition of punishment. Western criminal justice systems employ this approach in the context that, an offender, having breached the law, deserves punishment and, to re-establish justice, have to receive punishment proportional to the crime committed. The core principle in this approach is that, wrongness of the crime committed justifies the imposition of punishment for justice to take its course. It is, therefore, understandable that retribution is the basis of all the contemporary law regimes. Retribution serves the moral ends of a society, and does not consider the offender, hence, considered serving as a social deterrent (Wenzel et al., 2008).

Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is an alternative to retributive justice. In restorative justice, punishment does not core, and it stresses on repairing the harm inflicted through criminal acts. Cooperation is the central role, whereby the criminal and the victim take part to achieve restorative justice. It is a less punitive approach, but critics suggest that it is ineffective in violent youth offences. When one compares retributive and restorative justice in youth offenders, the latter provides an insight to the crimes and in most cases reduce recidivism rates. By giving the youth offender a chance to explain, confront and comprehend the consequences of their offenses, restorative justice allows for social exclusion and possible stigmatization (Wenzel et al., 2008).

Research Question

The overall objective of this proposal is to develop a research framework, which an investigator will use to establish whether restorative justice does, or does not reduce chances of youth offending. Therefore, the guiding question will be as follows;

1) Do Restorative Justice Approaches Reduce Youth Offending?

Literature Review

Retributive Justice

From the criminal law perspective, retributive justice aims at treating youth offenders in formally controlled systems. The concept behind the disciplinary approach shows a consistency with the paradigm of punitive justice. The core theme of retributive justice is that the country is the victim of a criminal act, and the focus is on the youth who violated the laws and interests of the country. When the juvenile justice system operates under the retributive justice approach, focuses upon the offender and the public fear of criminal activities (Wenzel et al., 2008). Therefore, this results to the placement of the crime victims and their sympathizers, including their families in a passive position.

In most of the cases, retributive justice leads to youth offenders being put in facilities, where they are more prone to contamination with multifaceted values, and similarly, there is no chance for possible integration into the community, or victim compensation without stigmatization. There is evidence that suggests retributive justice is unfair, in the sense that guilty youth offenders face the wrath of the law without special consideration. In addition, owing to the custodial placement of youth offenders, studies have provided empirical evidence terming it ineffective, when compare to community-based treatments (Haley, 1995).

Therefore, if the law is to protect the youth offenders to deviate from criminal careers and restoring the society for re-integration, retributive justice will not help in achieving this objective (Haley, 1995). This is because the youth offenders will integrate with other criminals, which will increase the rate of recidivism, primarily because of high chances of youth re-offending. Justice as retribution or revenge is failing crime prevention, and correctional policies, and simultaneously conflicts with the basic principles of rehabilitation.

International Approaches to Juvenile Justice

The United States was the first country to create a community-based restorative justice approach in the globe. The objective was to provide a restoration oriented approach to assist youth offenders. Since then, other global countries have adopted the approach. This was a way of acknowledging the special status of the youth in the society. The move would avoid a punitive approach, which failed to realize the goals of the criminal justice system. Other countries in Western Europe, such as Australia, New Zealand, have adopted the restorative juvenile justice. Owing to this, the restorative juvenile justice has become a model, which countries are incorporating in their justice system to protect children, and minors from the punitive approach of the law (Latimer, Dowden, & Muise, 2005).

Effectiveness of Restorative Justice

Substantial literatures have perceived restorative justice as a holistic philosophy because it involves offenders, victims and the society in the reparation process. Restorative justice aims to bring the crime and conflicts to an end after repairing the hurt and damage. It serves as an alternative justice to the current criminal system, but its main aim is to eliminate the damage to the victims and youth offenders resulting from the criminal system to the minimum with the aid of the society. Countries, which use this approach, have reported significant effectiveness to certain degrees provided in empirical studies in different contexts (Sherman & Heather, 2007).

One of the major findings on the effectiveness of restorative justice is the reduced recidivism. Apparently, re-offending is the main concern for policy makers. Therefore, they select restorative justice as an alternative to the punitive approach. This shows that the capacity to reduce recidivism is the most essential motive to adopt restorative justice, particularly in tackling youth re-offending. Substantial evaluations of restorative justice approaches have illustrated significant reduction of recidivism. This is when there is a comparison to the traditional punitive approaches. Additionally, benefits are improved integration of society, improved volunteerism, and fewer cases of criminal activities from the youth offenders (Forgays & DeMillio, 2005).

Research Design

Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis is a statistical evaluation of a collection of researches that separate the level of a connection between two or more variables. The studies may vary on important attributes such as sample size, selection techniques, independent, and dependent variables. Nonetheless, a meta-analysis can illustrate the strength of the influence under investigation, and provide a chance to examine potential moderating variables. Meta-analytic reviews are superior techniques in the synthesis of studies. This is because the technique is systematic, exhaustive, and explicit. They also have aspects of quantitative research. In criminal research, meta-analysis appears to be the most popular approach, especially in studies to predict criminal behavior (Latimer, Dowden, & Muise, 2005). In this context, several authors or criminal research scholars used this approach to ascertain the efficacy of restorative justice elements.

Method

This study recommends the use of a meta-analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of restorative justice programs. One challenge that the investigator may encounter is the lack of a common definition of restorative justice. For the purpose of the subsequent study, the definition to employ is, restorative justice is a voluntary, community-based reaction to delinquent behavior that tries to include the victim, offender, and society in the effort to address the damage resulting from the delinquent behavior. This is proper because there lacks an operational definition, which is vital due to subsequent investigations. For this proposal, no programs that may contain restorative aspects, for example, restitution, community service, and failed to bring together the victim, offender, and the society should apply.

Study Identification Criterion

In order to collect eligible studies for the meta-analysis, the investigator will conduct a comprehensive search on restorative justice literature over the past 10 years. Studies will come from the internet, social science journals, governmental and non-governmental literature. In addition, the investigator will follow the provided criteria to select studies:

1) The study should have assessed a restorative justice approach that is within the provided definition

2) The study should have used a control group

3) The study must have reported at least one of the four results for the control or comparison group: victim satisfaction, offender satisfaction, recidivism, and restitution compliance

4) The study should have sufficient statistical data to calculate an effect size

Data Analysis

Owing to the approach proposed, it is important to conduct data analysis. Therefore, the investigator will calculate the correlation between the participation in a restorative justice approach and each of the four results (recidivism, victim satisfaction, offender satisfaction, and restitution compliance) reported within each chosen study. In addition, the investigator will use the phi coefficient (Pearson's r product-moment correlation used to dichotomous information), which will apply as the effect size approximation. In case a study fails to provide relevant data, but shows a non-significant correlation between participation in a restorative justice approach and there is reporting of an outcome, the investigator will record the effect size as zero. After calculating the effect sizes from each chosen study, the investigator will conduct an evaluation across each of the four outcome measures provided.

The investigator will first calculate the overall mean effect size, alongside the confidence intervals and standard deviation. The investigator will also calculate the weighted and unweighted mean effect sizes, but the investigator will only list the unweighted estimates, and subsequently use them to interpret the results. This is important in case the investigator assumes the number of victims, which can reduce the reliability of the weighted outcomes. The investigator will also need to determine the statistical significance of the overall difference between restorative approaches and non-restorative control, or comparison group.

The investigator will achieve this by conducting one sample test, which will determine if the mean effect size shows the significance from zero (in this case, a zero effect size shows that taking part in restorative justice had no effect on the consequent results). As well, it is essential to consider the different setting of the studies, and this proposal recommends a further evaluation to explore whether other variables, which may include the demographic or study attributes, had an influence on the effect size magnitude. In so doing, the investigator will be in a position to isolate particular restorative approach impacts for further research.