A Comparison of Four Restorative Conferencing Models

Restorative justice is a framework for juvenile justice reform that seeks to engage victims, offenders and their families, other citizens, and community groups both as clients of juvenile justice services and as resources in an effective response to youth crime. Traditionally, when a crime is committed, juvenile justice systems have been primarily concerned with three questions: Who did it? What laws were broken? What should be done to punish or treat the offender? As noted by Howard Zehr (1990), restorative justice emphasizes three very different questions: What is the nature of the harm resulting from the crime? What needs to be done to “make it right” or repair the harm? Who is responsible for this repair? Restorative justice also suggests that the response to youth crime must strike a balance among the needs of victims, offenders, and communities and that each should be actively involved in the justice process to the greatest extent possible.