Juvenile Justice Bulletin -- February 2001 -- A Comparison of Four Restorative Conferencing Models


John J. Wilson, Acting Administrator	February 2001

A Comparison of Four Restorative Conferencing Models

Gordon Bazemore and Mark Umbreit

Introduction

Victim-Offender Mediation

Community Reparative Boards

Family Group Conferencing

Circle Sentencing

Comparing and Contrasting the Four Models: Administration and Process

Comparing and Contrasting the Four Models: Community Involvement and Other Dimensions

Comparing and Contrasting the Four Models: Summary

Issues and Concerns

Implications and Conclusions

References

Bibliography

This Bulletin was prepared under cooperative agreement number 95朖N朏X�24 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice.

Points of view or opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of OJJDP or the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

From the Administrator

Reconciling the needs of victims and offenders with the needs of the community is the underlying goal of restorative justice. Unlike retributive justice, which is primarily concerned with punishing crime, restorative justice focuses on repairing the injury that crime inflicts.

As a means to that end, restorative conferencing brings together victims, offenders, and other members of the community to hold offenders accountable not only for their crimes but for the harm they cause to victims.

This Bulletin features four models of restorative conferencing:

Victim-offender mediation.
Community reparative boards.
Family group conferencing.
Circle sentencing.

These models are compared and contrasted in administration, process, community involvement, and other dimensions, and several related issues and concerns are addressed.

If restorative justice is to succeed in contributing to the systematic reform of our juvenile justice system, it must embody new values that reflect the needs of victims, offenders, and communities. The models described in this Bulletin embody these values and provide tools for communities engaged in implementing restorative justice.

John J. Wilson
Acting Administrator

Acknowledgments

Gordon Bazemore, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Director of the Community Justice Institute at Florida Atlantic University. Mark Umbreit, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Bazemore and Dr. Umbreit are Principal Investigators for the Balanced and Restorative Justice Project, an OJJDP-funded research initiative that is a joint project of Florida Atlantic University and the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking.

NCJ 184738

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