Offender Journeys in Restorative Youth Justice Conferencing: The Overlap Between Restorative Justice and Desistance

ABSTRACT

Although restorative justice (RJ) and desistance are theoretically interlinked, less is empirically known about how and why RJ conferencing may support change toward desistance. Drawing on the South Australian Juvenile Justice dataset, I examined how young offenders’ experiences with RJ conferencing coincide or overlap with desistance trajectories. The findings led to establishing the concept of offender journeys, which identified three distinct desistance trajectories through RJ conferencing: (1) optimal journeys, whereby young offenders had a positive experience with RJ conferencing and completely ceased crime, (2) changing journeys, whereby young offenders had a positive experience with RJ conferencing but faced challenges in maintaining a crime-free lie, and (3) difficult journeys, whereby young offenders escalated their offending after RJ conferencing. This finding suggests that youth desistance trajectories through RJ conferencing are more divergent than discussed in the literature, calling for a multifaceted theoretical explanation rather than a single desistance theory.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author note

I report that there are no competing conflicts of interest to disclose. I thank Professor Kathleen Daly for granting me access to the South Australian Juvenile Justice dataset. This research is based partly on my doctoral dissertation.

Notes

¹ At the time of the data collection, police officer in South Australia were permitted to exercise their discretion in referring “any offence for which the youth has already received a formal police caution” to the conference proceedings (Daly et al. 1998:5).

² Viewing RJ conferencing as a holistic process (Suzuki and Wood 2017), participation in the RJ conferencing process initiates during the preparatory phase. Offenders’ emotions begin to shape and evolve even before the face-to-face dialogue stage (Bruce and Bolitho 2019), and the facilitators’ preparation plays a significant role in this aspect (Rypi 2017). Therefore, examining the motivations and attitudes surrounding participation is tantamount to exploring the experiential aspects of engagement in RJ conferencing.

³ Full details of the classifications are available upon request.

⁴ Pseudonyms are used for adolescents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Masahiro Suzuki

Masahiro Suzuki, is an incoming lecturer in criminology at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University, United Kingdom. His research interests include restorative justice, youth offending, desistance, victimology, comparative criminology, and elder crime. As an early career researcher, he has more than 30 publications in reputable journals and edited books. He also received several academic awards for his research on restorative justice and comparative criminology.