Restorative justice and desistance: a quantitative and qualitative analysis of restorative justice programming for youth

Dissatisfaction with traditional forms of crime control in the context of youth offending has led to the exploration of alternative paradigms such as restorative justice. This study outlines restorative justice as both a theory and set of penal policies before discussing its practices. Also, this study examines the relationship between restorative justice and desistance. Desistance is both an outcome measure of restorative justice as well as a paradigm of its own. This study finds that restorative justice practices produce desistance across a range of practices and contexts regarding youth offenders. Differential effectiveness, long touted as a pitfall of restorative justice research is also addressed. This study finds that despite variations in restorative justice practices as well as differences in the offenders that participate in them, overall, restorative justice has statistically significant effects of the production of desistance. This research also outlines a more qualitative understanding of how restorative justice mechanisms work with young offenders in producing desistance. Concepts such as reintegrative shaming, the role of dialogue, systems, of support, and procedural justice are described. This research concludes by offering suggestions for research in the future, such as the effect of socio-economic status on restorative justice outcomes, a greater degree of variation in sample size, and a focus on conducting and citing randomized trials. Further use of restorative justice as well as further research into its implementation and data collection is encouraged, as well as a need to examine the applicability of restorative justice in minority contexts