Offender journeys in restorative youth justice conferencing: the overlap between restorative justice and desistance

Although restorative justice (RJ) and desistance are theoretically interlinked, less is empirically known about how and why RJ conferencing may support change toward desistance. Drawing on the South Australian Juvenile Justice dataset, I examined how young offenders’ experiences with RJ conferencing coincide or overlap with desistance trajectories. The findings led to establishing the concept of offender journeys, which identified three distinct desistance trajectories through RJ conferencing: (1) optimal journeys, whereby young offenders had a positive experience with RJ conferencing and completely ceased crime, (2) changing journeys, whereby young offenders had a positive experience with RJ conferencing but faced challenges in maintaining a crime-free life, and (3) difficult journeys, whereby young offenders escalated their offending after RJ conferencing. This finding suggests that youth desistance trajectories through RJ conferencing are more divergent than discussed in the literature, calling for a multifaceted theoretical explanation rather than a single desistance theory.