Overview

A restorative justice conference is a face-to-face meeting between a youth offender, the victims in the incident and other members of the community who have been affected by the incident.

Restorative Justice

The concept of restorative justice (RJ) holds that when a crime is committed, the offender incurs an obligation to restore the victim, and by extension the community, to the state of well being that existed before the offense.

In 1999 the General Assembly of the State of Colorado declared its support of this philosophy through the passage of Bill 99-1156: where the assembly's intent is to provide a system of juvenile justice that will "provide the opportunity to bring together affected victims, the community and juvenile offenders for restorative approaches."

On March 31, 2008, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter signed into law House Bill 08-1117, which authorizes the use of restorative justice (RJ) in the state’s Children’s Code and gives Colorado the legislative edge among states that sanction the use of RJ. The bill passed 63-1 in the House and 33-0 in the Senate.

"By making juvenile offenders take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, we can teach them that the decisions they make, both good and bad, will affect the course of their life," Gov. Ritter said. "Repairing the harm that someone has caused can be the thing that matters most in the criminal-justice system. As a former prosecutor, I've seen too many people start out committing minor crimes as juveniles and escalate to committing serious crimes as adults. We must do everything we can to intervene early and break this cycle."

What does "restorative" mean?

Traditionally when a crime is committed, the justice system has been primarily concerned with three questions:

1. Who did it?
2. What laws were broken?
3. What should be done to punish or treat the offender?

This type of approach is considered retributive, where the intent is to get retribution or punishment for an offense committed.

Restorative justice programs emphasize three very different questions:

1. What is the nature of the harm resulting from the crime?
2. What needs to be done to "make it right" or repair the harm?
3. Who is responsible for this repair?

This approach is restorative, where the intent is to restore the community affected by the crime as close as possible to pre-crime conditions.

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.

The term "restorative conferencing" refers to a range of processes that bring together victims, offenders and community members into face-to-face meetings aimed at responding to crime by holding offenders accountable and repairing the harm caused to victims and communities.

Some of these programs/strategies are currently being implemented in some areas of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe.