Restorative justice in Australia and New Zealand: A faustian bargain with the state?

Within the global growth of restorative justice, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand (henceforth New Zealand) are often considered as exemplars of restorative justice practices. These countries were among the first to widely implement the use of restorative justice in the late 1980s and 1990s, and both countries remain among the few where restorative justice is legislated across all jurisdictions for use in youth offending. Contrary to grassroots development in Canada and the United States, restorative justice programmes in Australia and New Zealand were initially implemented in a more ‘top-down’ approach through legislation. This top-down approach has resulted in restorative justice being widely available for young people and those they have harmed. However, existing research and evaluation studies demonstrate that restorative justice programmes in both countries face several challenges related to the relatively high level of institutionalisation. Some of these challenges – in particular, the co-option of restorative justice for other administrative or criminal justice system goals – are common throughout literature on the topic in many countries. Other challenges and problems, explored herein, remain more specific to the context of Australia and New Zealand.