Advocates of restorative justice (RJ) hypothesize that the diversion of criminal cases to RJ conferences should be more effective in lowering the rate of reoffending than traditional prosecution in court processing because the conferences more effectively engage the psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice. This study uses longitudinal data from the drinking‐and‐driving study in the Australian Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) to evaluate the long‐term impact of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice on support for the law and on later recidivism as assessed through the use of police records and by self‐report. Analysis first suggests that there is no direct effect of experimental condition on later recidivism. However, it further suggests that both traditional court‐based prosecution and RJ conferences increase support for the law and lower the rate of future reoffending when they engage the social psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice and thereby increase the legitimacy of the law. Hence, the results argue for the potential value of procedures such as the RJ conference but indicate that those procedures will only achieve their objectives if they are effectively designed and implemented.

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The Campbell Collaboration (C2) was founded on the principle that systematic reviews on the effects of interventions will inform and help improve policy and services. C2 offers editorial and methodological support to review authors throughout the process of producing a systematic review. A number of C2's editors, librarians, methodologists and external peerreviewers contribute. The Campbell Collaboration Synopsis/Abstract OBJECTIVEThis systematic review examines the effects of the subset of restorative justice programs that has been tested most extensively: a face-to-face Restorative Justice Conference (RJC) "that brings together offenders, their victims, and their respective kin and communities, in order to decide what the offender should do to repair the harm that a crime has caused" (Sherman and Strang, 2012: 216). The Review investigates the effects of RJCs on offenders' subsequent convictions (or in one case arrests) for crime, and on several measures of victim impact. The review considers only randomized controlled trials in which victim and offenders consented to meet prior to random assignment, the analysis of which was based on the results of an "intention-to-treat" analysis. A total of ten experiments with recidivism outcomes were found that met the eligibility criteria, all of which also had at least one victim impact measure. CONCLUSIONSOur synthesis of these experiments shows that, on average, RJCs cause a modest but highly cost-effective reduction in repeat offending, with substantial benefits for victims. A cost-effectiveness estimate for the seven United Kingdom (UK) experiments found a ratio of 8 times more benefit in costs of crimes prevented than the cost of delivering RJCs.

One major goal of face-to-face restorative justice (RJ) is to help heal the psychological harm suffered by crime victims (Braithwaite, 2002). Substantial evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) has shown that this can be accomplished (Strang, 2002) and more trials are underway (Sherman & Strang, 2004 The costs of crime are rarely calculated to include its full impact on crime victims. The British government, for example, employs a formula to estimate crime costs that includes property loss, health services, and victim support services, but makes only a crude estimation of the emotional costs entailed in victimization with no mention of such victim effects as fear of the offender repeating the crime, emotions of anger or grievance, or loss of a general sense of trust in others (Brand