Returning Justice to the Community: The Indianapolis Juvenile Restorative Justice Experiment

• NCJ Number: 186304
• Author(s): Edmund F.. McGarrell; Kathleen Olivares; Kay Crawford; Natalie Kroovand
• Date Published: June 2000
• Length: 68 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Lilly Endowment, Inc; Donner (William H) Foundation, Inc; Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP); Indiana Criminal Justice Institute; Smith Richardson Foundation
• Sale Source: Hudson Institute
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This report describes the implementation and the initial results of an experiment on the use of restorative justice conferences (The Indianapolis Juvenile Restorative Justice Experiment) as an alternative response to early law-breaking by young offenders.

Abstract

Restorative justice conferences bring the offending youth, the victim, and the supporters of both offender and victim together to discuss the incident and the harm brought to the victim and to the group of supporters. Conferences provide the opportunity for victims to explain how they have been harmed and to ask questions of the offending youth. Supporters of both victims and offenders have the opportunity to describe how they have been affected by the incident and their concerns about the youth's behavior. Conferences end with a reparation agreement in which all the participants reach an agreement on how the youth can make amends to the victim and the community. This report presents the practical and theoretical rationale for restorative justice conferences, describes the development of the Indianapolis project, and presents the initial findings from the first stage of this ongoing experiment. This first stage involved youths age 14 and younger with no prior court adjudications. The experimental design used random assignment procedures that provided comparisons between victims, offending youths, and parents involved in conferences, as well as those involved in other court-ordered diversion programs. For the total sample, youths who participated in conferences were significantly less likely to have been rearrested 6 months after the initial incident. The rate of rearrest was 20 percent for program youths compared to 30 percent for the control group. This constituted a 40 percent reduction and is statistically significant. For the total sample, youths who participated in conferences were also less likely to relapse 12 months after the initial incident. 16 tables, 7 figures, and 37 references