New Zealand Ministry of Justice: Reoffending Analysis for Restorative Justice Cases: 2008 and 2009

In the New Zealand criminal justice system, restorative justice is primarily delivered through a meeting between the victim and the offender called a restorative justice conference. Currently, the Ministry of Justice provides funding for about 1,500 conferences per year.

The principal finding of this report is that those who had been through a restorative justice conference had a 20% lower reoffending rate than comparable offenders who did not receive a restorative justice conference (33.2% and 41.3% respectively). This result, from the 2009 cohort, is a statistically significant, risk-adjusted reoffending rate over the 12 months following the finalisation of cases.

There were even larger differences between conferenced and comparable offenders in both the frequency of reoffending and the proportion of offenders who were imprisoned as a consequence of their reoffending.

In the 2009 cohort, those who participated in restorative justice reoffended 23% less frequently over the following 12 months relative to the matched comparison group of offenders (66 versus 85 new offences per 100 offenders). 

It was also found that offenders who went through a restorative justice conference in 2009 were 33% less likely than comparable offenders to be imprisoned for reoffending that occurred over the following 12 months (5.2% compared to 7.8%).

Findings were less clear for the smaller 2008 cohort and the restorative justice conferences did not appear to affect the seriousness of reoffending.

The findings are comparable to research conducted by the UK Ministry of Justice.