In May 2014, the Centre for Innovative Justice, a department within RMIT University in Australia, published a major report which recommends the use of restorative justice in cases of sexual offending.

The report, Innovative justice responses to sexual offending, recommends that "with comprehensive safeguards and a co-ordinated, properly resourced system, sexual offence restorative justice conferencing has the potential to meet more of the justice needs of those victims who are being failed by the existing system."

In September 2001, the Home Office released two studies on the use of restorative justice. These were An Exploratory Evaluation of Restorative Justice Schemes and An International Review of Restorative Justice. Each report provides cautions and suggestions for implementing restorative justice programmes.

An Exploratory Evaluation of Restorative Justice Schemes relays the findings of a 15-month research study of seven restorative justice schemes across England. Two of these programmes dealt with adult offenders and the rest with juveniles.

The two main goals were to:

By Roderick Hill, Karen Cooper, Carolyn Hoyle and Richard Young. Oxford University Centre for Criminological Research Occasional Paper No. 20. (2003)

This paper presents the findings of a study contrasting informal resolution in a police force operating the existing statutory system in a traditional way, with a force piloting the use of restorative justice conferences.

A summary file can be found below.
 

This is the first year report of Home Office-funded pilot studies of three restorative justice projects.

The report focuses on the processes of development and setting up of the three restorative justice schemes funded by the Home Office under its Crime Reduction Programme from mid-2001: CONNECT, the Justice Research Consortium and REMEDI.

It describes in detail the aims and content of the schemes and their early efforts to become established.

This is the second report on pilot studies of three restorative justice projects: CONNECT, the Justice Research Consortium, and REMEDI.

This report reveals the findings of a 2008 evaluation of restorative approaches in schools in Barnet.  

This is the final Ministry of Justice report into the restorative justice trials that began in 2001. This concluding report gives the results of the research, highlighting both the positive impact of restorative justice on reducing reconviction rates and the cost-effectiveness of the intervention.

In 2004, the Scottish Executive established a 30-month pilot project in restorative practices in three local authorities, each of which was funded with about £45,000 annually. The pilot project was later extended until 2008.

This final report shares the findings of the collaborative evaluation of the implementation over the first two years of restorative practices in 18 of the pilot schools: one special, seven primary and 10 secondary schools.

In June 2008, the Ministry of Justice released its final report into the Restorative Justice trials that began in 2001.

The concluding report covers the results of the research regarding the impact of RJ on reconviction rates as well as how cost effective the intervention is.

The report shows:

This 2009 research draws on four years of data from three restorative justice services in Scotland to explore the factors associated with service user participation, agreement rates, the use of direct or indirect restorative processes, and different forms of reparation.

Among other things, the results show that participation is more likely if the accused is contacted before the victim, if the alleged offence involves vandalism, and if the accused is male or young or does not have a recorded history of offending.