Effectiveness of Resotrative Justice Principles in Juvenile Justice: A Meta-Analysis

This program furthers the Department's mission by providing grants and cooperative agreements for research and evaluation activities to organizations that OJJDP designates.

The proposed project aims to synthesize the quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of restorative justice programs for youth. Although there have been two recent reviews of these studies, these reviews came to conflicting conclusions and both were highly restrictive in terms of which studies were eligible for inclusion in the review. The team aims to extend current understanding of the effectiveness of these programs by examining which components of restorative justice programs are more effective than others, if any, in fostering positive outcomes for juveniles. A broader perspective on restorative justice programs and include programs along a continuum from those that fully adopt a restorative justice model to programs that only include a single restorative justice component will be applied. This will allow the team to examine the relative effectiveness of various program components and mixtures of these components. The team will examine all outcomes reported in eligible studies with particular focus on future criminal behavior, victim and offender satisfaction and perceptions of fairness, and offender behavioral outcomes such as restitution and production of apology letters.

Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law.

CA/NCF