Police-referred restorative justice for juveniles in Australia

The paper provides an overview of the legislative and policy context of restorative justice measures for juveniles in each Australian state and territory, highlighting the diverse characteristics of current practices. Numbers and characteristics of juveniles who are referred by police to restorative justice measures and the offence types for which they are most commonly referred are provided. Key points include that juveniles were referred to conferences primarily for property crimes and that Indigenous juveniles comprised higher proportions of those sent to court than to conferencing. The paper argues that more detailed data on the offending histories, offence types and offence seriousness of juveniles referred by police to restorative justice processes would enable a more finely-grained analysis of restorative justice for juveniles in Australia.  &nbsp