The Center for Victim Research Library presents an annotated bibliography of research reports related to the impact on crime victims of their participation in a restorative justice process.
Restorative justice focuses on repairing the harm caused by a crime by engaging victims, offenders, their families, and other citizens or community groups in deciding how best to address harms to the victim caused by the crime and manage accountability and rehabilitation for the offender. Restorative justice practices offer an additional or, in some cases, an alternative to processing in the traditional retributive justice system. Victims who have participated in restorative justice procedures typically express higher levels of satisfaction with the criminal justice management of their cases compared to victims exposed only to traditional criminal justice case processing. The current annotated listing of resources on this issue focuses on research that has examined the impact of restorative justice practices on victims. Most of the research reports listed were published between 2009 and 2019. Listings include meta-analyses, journal articles, and program evaluations. Articles are sorted first by year and then by author. The restorative justice procedures addressed in the listings primarily involve victim-offender mediation, victim-offender conversational interaction, and conferences involving selected parties. The listings are categorized under the following topics: 1) definitions and origins of restorative justice (4 listings); 2) meta-analyses (7 listings); 3) restorative justice conferencing (10 listings); 4) victim-offender dialogue (4 listings); 5) peacemaking circles (2 listings); 6) victim-offender mediation (4 listings); 7) victim impact panels (2 listings); and 8) comparisons of interventions (4 listings). Online access is provided for six toolkits/programmatic resources.