An Exploratory Evaluation of Restorative Justice Schemes
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:
- identify the best practices of schemes to be mainstreamed
- evaluate the cost effectiveness of the elements that are most effective at lowering recidivism and crime
Mixed conclusions resulted from this evaluation. The seven programmes displayed diversity in:
- the understanding of restorative justice
- degree of focus on victims or offenders
- the process used
Questions about satisfaction also returned mixed results. Victims varied on their statement of satisfaction with the system. The most frequent complaint was time needed to complete the process. Two-thirds of victims believed that the intervention did have a positive impact on the offender, while others expressed skepticism of the offender’s motives. On the other hand, offenders showed more satisfaction, although many of them found it very difficult to face their victim.
Effectiveness of the schemes also showed mixed results. In the West Yorkshire adult offender scheme, the findings revealed a significant impact on reoffending despite the high probability of reoffending and serious original offences. However, the West Midlands scheme for adult offenders did not show a significant difference between the control and the test groups.
