Restorative Justice for Juvenile Offenders: A Literature Review

Introduction

Restorative justice has become increasingly prominent within the criminal justice sphere, and its use has emerged in its own right within the juvenile justice realm. The efficacy of restorative justice for juvenile offenders is a critically important topic because breaking the patterns of crime, addiction, and deviance is best accomplished early in an offender's life, before repeated contact with the justice system entrenches those patterns further. It is important to maintain a meaningful connection between young offenders and the victims who suffer at their hands, so that offenders do not become ambivalent or hostile toward the suffering their crimes cause. Only through empirically grounded evidence and accumulated history can offenders be helped to make peace with their communities rather than losing their lives to institutionalization and ongoing criminality.

The purpose of this literature review is to assess whether restorative justice shows promise based on the data and evidence available to this point. Findings thus far have indicated some positive results, though these are not entirely uniform or consistent across the studies examined. This report assembles ten different empirical studies and reviews addressing restorative justice, its efficacy, and its key dimensions.

Overview of Restorative Justice in the Juvenile Context

The primary question surrounding restorative justice — whether applied to juveniles or offenders generally — is how far the concept can be taken before more severe and punitive punishments become necessary based on real-world results and statistics. Rather than relying on persuasion alone, the focus here is on empirical and historical evidence. Some argue that certain individuals simply need a second chance and a measure of good faith, while others maintain that a direct path to punishment is the only reliable deterrent. A related consideration involves alternatives such as house arrest, probation, or other non-custodial measures, which avoid the deep entrenchment that can occur once a person is fully absorbed into the system. Either way, there appears to be a marked shift away from conventional incarceration and toward alternative means of reducing crime rates, recidivism rates, and incarceration rates. Whether any of these approaches work can only be demonstrated by attempting them and comparing outcomes against those of more traditional methods. While restorative justice holds promise in the eyes of many, ongoing and verifiable results will be required to persuade criminal justice experts and scholars that it is a worthwhile alternative to conventional practice.

One of the more pervasive themes in restorative justice literature is using the approach as a means of breaking the cycle of simply sending juvenile offenders to incarceration and allowing them to become absorbed by the system. One prominent flashpoint in this regard is Chicago, given the rampant gang and gun crime that pervades the city and its surrounding area. Restorative justice is seen by many as a superior alternative to incarceration in that context, though that view is not unanimous. The Chicago iteration focuses on victim/offender mediation, peacemaking, overall violence reduction programs, and the handling of younger offenders guilty of serious crimes such as murder. These approaches are compared and contrasted with similar initiatives in other parts of the world, including Canada.

Overall, four primary perceived benefits of restorative justice have been identified. First, restored offenders — regardless of age — are less likely to recidivate. Second, restorative programs are more cost-efficient than conventional incarceration. Third, the system is more effective because it involves direct interaction and participation of victims, which is often absent in conventional criminal justice processes. Finally, juveniles are much more likely to be rehabilitated and thus able to live most of their lives in a more moral and crime-free manner (Tsui, 2014).

Gender, Recidivism, and Differential Outcomes

One aspect of restorative justice and its application to young offenders that many point to is the increasing emergence of female offenders and the associated need to tailor programs accordingly. For much of American history, the most violent and serious offenders dealt with by the criminal justice system — regardless of the approach used — have typically been male. However, more recent crime and offender data, both for juveniles and older offenders, indicate that this is changing. According to a United States Department of Justice survey conducted in 2007, the number of younger female offenders was rising sharply. As such, any programs and interventions relating to restorative justice would, in the view of some experts, need to involve and center on women just as much as on men. Even if the general methodology of restorative justice remains consistent across genders, many assert that programming must also account for differences between male and female offenders. Results in this area have been encouraging: a significant number of female offenders have been able to avoid formal adjudication and entry into the system due to these more modern intervention tactics, gaining a new lease on life and reducing their likelihood of future criminal activity and incarceration (Davis, 2010).

Recidivism is one of the most important metrics for evaluating whether restorative justice programs work. If participation in such a program has no apparent effect on whether a person commits further crimes, the value of the program is immediately called into question. Studies examining precisely this question have produced results that, while sometimes mixed, have been largely positive. A 2007 study by Rodriguez found that juveniles who participated in restorative justice programs were clearly less likely to reoffend than those processed through conventional juvenile justice pathways — whether juvenile hall or adult court. That said, the biological sex of the offender and the nature of prior offenses had a significant bearing on future offending patterns. Recidivism patterns differed for male and female offenders and also varied depending on whether prior crimes involved robbery, theft, vandalism, or more serious offenses such as rape or murder. Female offenders and those with less serious prior criminal histories were found to be substantially less likely to reoffend than male offenders or those with more extensive or serious criminal records. Many scholars argue that this underscores the need to tailor restorative justice approaches to the nature of prior offenses and the gender of the offender — treating violent and non-violent offenders differently and accounting for gender-specific dynamics in program design (Rodriguez, 2007).

Conclusion

Even with the promise of restorative justice — particularly for juvenile offenders — the practice remains nascent and still developing. Many argue that the art, form, and practice of restorative justice will improve and be refined over time, and that results will reflect these improvements. Others suggest that findings are too mixed and inconclusive at this stage to draw firm conclusions. As with many emerging approaches in criminal justice, it will likely take additional time to determine whether restorative justice is truly transformative and effective, as building a robust empirical record and an established evidence base for the practice requires sustained commitment and longitudinal study.

References

Bergseth, K. J., & Bouffard, J. A. (2007). The long-term impact of restorative justice programming for juvenile offenders. Journal of Criminal Justice, 35(4), 433–451. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2007.05.006

Davis, K. L. (2010). Restorative justice experiences of juvenile female offenders: School, community, and home. ProQuest LLC.

Fields, B. A. (2003). Restitution and restorative justice in juvenile justice and school discipline. Youth Studies Australia, 22(4), 44–51.

Gal, T., & Moyal, S. (2011). Juvenile victims in restorative justice. British Journal of Criminology, 51(6), 1014–1034.

Gavrieldes, T. (2014). Bringing race relations into the restorative justice debate: An alternative and personalized vision of "the other." Journal of Black Studies, 45(3), 216–234.

Kim, H. J., & Gerber, J. (2012). The effectiveness of re-integrative shaming and restorative justice conferences: Focusing on juvenile offenders' perceptions in Australian reintegrative shaming experiments. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 56(7), 1063–1079. doi:10.1177/0306624X11418916

Kline, D. S. (2016). Can restorative practices help to reduce disparities in school discipline data? A review of the literature. Multicultural Perspectives, 18(2), 97–102.

Miner-Romanoff, K. (2016). [Art-based restorative justice programming for juvenile offenders.] [Journal not specified in source].

Rodriguez, N. (2007). Restorative justice at work: Examining the impact of restorative justice resolutions on juvenile recidivism. Crime & Delinquency, 53(3), 355–379.

Sliva, S. M. (2017). A tale of two states: How U.S. state legislatures consider restorative justice policies. Contemporary Justice Review, 20(2), 255–273.

Tsui, J. C. (2014). Breaking free of the prison paradigm: Integrating restorative justice techniques into Chicago's juvenile justice system. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 104(3), 634–666.