Crossing cultural boundaries: Implementing restorative justice in international and indigenous contexts.

Source: (2006) Presentation for the Study tour: A Restorative Justice System for Juveniles: Information for Mexico from New Zealand.

It was about fifteen years ago that Howard Zehr (1990) wrote the first book about Restorative Justice (Changing Lenses), John Braithwaite (1989) wrote about “Crime, Shame and Reintegration” and New Zealand introduced the family group conference – restorative process for resolving matters when children and young people became involved in offending1. Since then, many other jurisdictions have experimented with various forms of restorative justice. Perhaps the most common form, especially for young people has been the use of restorative conference in youth justice. From its beginnings in New Zealand, it has spread to Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Sweden, Singapore, South Africa Macao, and the United States of America. Many different forms of restorative family conferencing for young people who have offended have emerged in these different states, provinces and countries for many different types of offences and for people from many different cultures. In this paper, I want to briefly review what has been learnt about the transferability of the process. In particular, what are the resolved questions and what issues still remain unresolved. And what are the conditions which must be met for the process to work in different jurisdictions and among different peoples. (excerpt)