The Effectiveness of Restorative Justice Programs: A Meta-Analysis of Recidivism and Other Outcomes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Restorative justice (RJ) is an alternative approach to the traditional criminal justice system (CJS) that focuses on repairing harm.Despite the recent proliferation of RJ programs, research suggests that their efficacy depends on various factors such as study methodology.The goal of the present study was to synthesize previous research on the effects of RJ in reducing recidivism as well as improving other outcomes.The findings from 59 studies on 67 samples examining the effectiveness of RJ programs were analyzed.The results revealed that RJ was associated with significant moderate reductions in general recidivism and improvements in satisfaction, procedural justice, offender accountability, offender attitudes, and reoffence severity.There were significant sample, study, and program moderators for general recidivism and victim procedural justice.Taken together, the results provide moderate support for the efficacy of RJ programs in reducing recidivism and suggest their potential for improving other outcomes over traditional CJS approaches.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.022 | 0.052 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.011 | 0.033 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".