RT Article
T1 Restorative Justice Conferencing: Not a Panacea for the Overrepresentation of Australia's Indigenous Youth in the Criminal Justice System
JF International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology
VO 62
IS 13
SP 4067
OP 4090
A1 Little, Simon
A2 Ryan, Nicole
A2 Stewart, Anna L.
LA English
YR 2018
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1665351578
AB Restorative justice conferencing is a police diversionary strategy used extensively in Australian jurisdictions to channel young offenders away from formal court processing. Advocates view conferencing as culturally appropriate and a means to reduce the overrepresentation of Indigenous young people because it is rooted in Indigenous justice traditions. However, whether conferencing is effective at reducing recidivism by Indigenous young people compared with non-Indigenous young people remains unknown. We examine this using a longitudinal cohort of youth offenders from Australia. Propensity score matching was used to match Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people at their first conference and examined reoffending outcomes to explore its efficacy at reducing recidivism (n = 394). Results indicate that, despite statistically controlling for factors related to reoffending, recidivism levels postconference were significantly higher for Indigenous young people. These results suggest that conferencing is unlikely to address the problem of Indigenous overrepresentation within Australia's youth justice system.
K1 Restorative justice conference
K1 Juvenile justice
K1 Race
K1 Propensity score matching
K1 Recidivism
K1 Jugendgerichtsbarkeit
K1 Rückfälligkeit
DO 10.1177/0306624X18764524