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Restorative Justice Conferences as an Early Response to Young Offenders
McGarrell, Edmund F.. Juvenile Justice Bulletin, August 2001
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/187769.pdf
In 1996, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention contracted with the Hudson Institute in Indianapolis to evaluate the use of restorative justice conferences for offenders under 15 years of age. The Hudson Institute worked with the Marion County courts to implement such a program. This article summarizes the findings from this experiment.
The study encompassed 458 juvenile offenders, 232 assigned randomly to the restorative justice treatment group and 226 assigned to the control group. The measures used in the study included conference observations, interviews with juvenile offenders, their parents or guardians, and victims, and court record data. Among its findings were: there was a higher rate of satisfaction for participants in the conferencing program than those in the control group; the most common element in the reparation agreement was apology, while other common elements included monetary restitution, personal service and community service; and there was a lower rearrest rate in the experimental group after six and twelve months.
Publisher or Resource Origin
National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)
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