The effectiveness of reintegrative shaming and restorative justice conferences: Focusing on juvenile offenders’ perceptions in Australian Reintegrative Shaming Experiments.

Source: (2011) International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. Published online before print August 8, 2011, doi: 10.1177/0306624X11418916 .

This article examines the effectiveness of diversionary restorative justice (RJ) conferences through the eyes of juvenile offenders. In Australia, Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) are based on Braithwaite’s theory of reintegrative shaming. Previous studies, although showing that RISE reported high levels of victim satisfaction and positive changes in the attitudes of offenders, also demonstrated that it has different outcomes for juvenile offenders depending on the type of offense with which they were charged. However, the effectiveness of RISE in terms of the offenders’ perceptions has not been addressed, and the impact of the offenders’ perceptions about RISE still remains under investigation. Using Australian data from RISE between 1995 and 1999, this article examines juvenile offenders’ perceptions on preventing reoffending, repaying the victim and society, and the degree of repentance. The data were taken from interviews with juvenile offenders to measure their perceptions after the court or RISE processing. A comparison of standard court processing effects and RISE on juvenile offending, including property crime, shoplifting, and violent offenses, was undertaken. The results from this study were somewhat inconsistent with previous research. In this study, there was no significant relationship between RJ conference and the offenders’ own perceptions on the prevention of future offending. However, it was found that there were treatment effects on repaying the victim, repaying society, and the degree of feeling repentance, and that younger offenders wanted to repay the victim/society and feel repentance. (author’s abstract)