Impact of Restitution on Recidivism of Juvenile Offenders - An Experiment in Clayton County Georgia

• NCJ Number: 96621
• Author(s): A L Schneider; P R Schneider
• Date Published: 1984
• Length: 21 pages
• Grant Number(s): 77-NI-99-0005; 79-JN-AX-0009; 82-JS-AX-0025
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Justice (NIJ); Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP); US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Corporate Author: Institute of Policy Analysis
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

To assess the impact of restitution on recidivism rates of juveniles, a series of experiments was undertaken as part of the national evaluation of the OJJDP-funded Juvenile Restitution Initiative. This report contains the results from on the those experiments.

Abstract

The findings from the Clayton county, Georgia restitution experiment indicate that youths required to make restitution to their victims either through community service or monetary payments generally had lower recidivism rates than those given the more traditional juvenile court dispositions. Furthermore, the results suggest that restitution works quite well on its own, without being combined with mental health counselling. In contrast with many other types of delinquency programs, the restitution intervention not only had a positive impact when contrasted with traditional dispositions, but slowed the delinquency rate of the group. The overall offense rate of the restitution-only group, for example, dropped from approximately one offense per youth per year to .74 offenses per youth for a 1-year time period. (Author abstract modified)