“Restorative justice” is a concept that refers to a wide range of justice practices that encourage offenders to take responsibility for their actions and to repair the harms they have caused, often through communication with their victims.
A recent Campbell review, led by Heather Strang, has examined the effectiveness of a subset of restorative justice procedures: 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.
Ten studies met the review’s inclusion criteria. They covered five jurisdictions on three continents, with a total of 734 interviewed victims and 1,879 offenders. The review team’s findings suggest that in cases in which both offenders and victims are willing to meet, RJCs appear likely to reduce future crimes. The results also suggest that victims’ satisfaction with the handling of their cases is consistently higher for victims assigned to RJCs than for victims whose cases are assigned to normal criminal justice processing.