“Restorative community justice: Community building approaches in juvenile justice”

Source: (2001) Paper presented at the 4th National Outlook Symposium on Crime in Australia – New Crimes or New Responses. Convened by the Australian Institute of Criminology. Canberra, Australia, 21-22 June.

In this paper White explores ways to integrate community building into juvenile justice work. He begins by placing juvenile offending in a community context: social and economic conditions in a community significantly affect the inclusion or exclusion of young people with respect to society. White then discusses restorative justice; restorative justice may appear attractive in dealing with juvenile offending through an emphasis on responding to crime by repairing harm to people and relationships. However, White argues, restorative justice needs to be refocused more directly on the tasks of community building — the broader idea of ‘restorative social justice’ rather than individualistic responses to specific harms. In terms of juvenile justice specifically, this leads to a restorative community justice model of intervention.