Little Simon, Stewart Anna, Ryan Nicole
1 Griffith University, Mount Gravatt, Queensland, Australia.
Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol. 2018 Oct;62(13):4067-4090. doi: 10.1177/0306624X18764524. Epub 2018 Mar 19.
Restorative justice conferencing is a police diversionary strategy used extensively in Australian jurisdictions to channel young offenders away from formal court processing. Advocates view conferencing as culturally appropriate and a means to reduce the overrepresentation of Indigenous young people because it is rooted in Indigenous justice traditions. However, whether conferencing is effective at reducing recidivism by Indigenous young people compared with non-Indigenous young people remains unknown. We examine this using a longitudinal cohort of youth offenders from Australia. Propensity score matching was used to match Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people at their first conference and examined reoffending outcomes to explore its efficacy at reducing recidivism ( n = 394). Results indicate that, despite statistically controlling for factors related to reoffending, recidivism levels postconference were significantly higher for Indigenous young people. These results suggest that conferencing is unlikely to address the problem of Indigenous overrepresentation within Australia's youth justice system.
恢复性司法会议是澳大利亚司法管辖区广泛采用的一种警方分流策略，旨在引导青少年罪犯远离正式的法庭程序。倡导者认为，会议在文化上是合适的，并且是减少土著青年过度代表的一种手段，因为它植根于土著司法传统。然而，与非土著青年相比，会议在减少土著青年再犯方面是否有效仍不清楚。我们使用来自澳大利亚的青少年罪犯纵向队列对此进行了研究。倾向得分匹配用于在首次会议时匹配土著和非土著青年，并检查再犯结果以探索其在减少再犯方面的效果（n = 394）。结果表明，尽管在统计上控制了与再犯相关的因素，但会议后土著青年的再犯率明显更高。这些结果表明，会议不太可能解决澳大利亚青少年司法系统中土著青年过度代表的问题。
