Group Conferencing is Associated with Lower Rates of Repeated Recidivism Among Higher-Risk Youth and There are Enhanced Effects Based on Who Attended the Conference

• Published date: 01 January 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/15412040241258952
• Author: Robert Bonett,Caleb D. Lloyd,Ariel G. Stone,James R. P. Ogloff
• Date: 01 January 2025
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice

2025, Vol. 23(1) 72–93

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/15412040241258952

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Group Conferencing is

Associated with Lower Rates of

Repeated Recidivism Among

Higher-Risk Youth and There

are Enhanced Effects Based on

Who Attended the Conference

Robert Bonett

1

, Caleb D. Lloyd

1

, Ariel G. Stone

1

, and

James R. P. Ogloff

1

Abstract

We examined criminal records across adolescence for a sample of young people processed

through a statewide Children’s Court (N= 2366) between 2012 and 2018, some of who were

referred to a group conferencing program (n= 836). We also examined associations between

different program elements and subsequent rates of recidivism, including victim, police, and family

participation in the conference process. Recurrent-event survival analysis indicated group

conferencing was associated with substantive reductions in the likelihood of recurrent recidivism

(26–40% reduced likelihood), controlling for individual propensity for recidivism and both static

and time-varying predictors. Within conference completers, binary logistic and negative binomial

regression indicated conferences attended by secondary victims and primary police members

were associated with larger reductions in post-conference recidivism, compared to conferences

with primary victim participation only. Importantly, recidivism likelihood and rates did not differ

between those attended by no victim or those attended by a primary victim.

Keywords

restorative justice, group conferencing, juvenile justice, survival analysis

Introduction

Over the past 3 decades, group conferencing has grown in popularity as an approach to implement

principles of restorative justice (RJ), a philosophical framework focused on collaborative, rather

1

Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Caleb D. Lloyd, Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science, Swinburne University of Technology, Level 1, 582 Heidelberg

Road, Alphington, VIC 3078, Australia

Email: cdlloyd@swin.edu.au

than adversarial, processes for addressing the aftermath of crime (Sherman & Strang, 2007). A

group conference typically involves the person charged with a crime, victim(s), families and

supporters of both, a police off‌icer, and other stakeholders (Maxwell et al., 2006) participating in a

facilitated discussion about how to address harm caused and prevent recurrence. The process is

presided over by a trained convenor. Conferencing is most widespread in juvenile justice (Zinsstag

et al., 2011).

As a judicial mechanism, conferencing aims to meet victim needs and reduce crime, and there

is empirical support that conferencing meets both aims (Sherman et al., 2015). However, several

factors limit the evidence base’s utility. First, researchers often conceptualize evaluations as a test

of RJ principles, rather than a specif‌ic application of a program model guided by RJ principles

(Daly, 2016). This has led researchers to combine dissimilar programs and populations to test RJ

theory (Bergseth & Bouffard, 2007;Wilson et al., 2017), or alternatively, to ignore programs that

do not embody what is viewed by some as the ideal program model, i.e., a face-to-fa ce victim

meeting (Sherman et al., 2015).

Underpinning these conceptualizations, researchers disagree whether conferencing reduces

recidivism via exposure to a victim’s perspective and the emotional valence of the conference

process (Rossner, 2014;Sherman & Strang, 2007), the outcome plan reached by a consensus-

based decision-making process (Becroft & Norrie, 2015;Maxwell et al., 2006), or perhaps a

combination of both. Empirical research has largely favored the former explanation (Sherman &

Strang, 2007), yet this may be because few researchers have considered other mechanisms that

may differentiate the effects of conferencing from conventional justice processes (Latimer et al.,

2005;Ward et al., 2014). Further, studies often focus on binary outcomes (recidivism vs. non-

recidivism) that do not describe gradual desistance processes (i.e., how crime likelihood varies

over time; Amorim & Cai, 2015) and thus cannot examine conferencing as a potential “step-

pingstone event”within a longer change process.

Further, conferencing researchers typically face both conceptual and methodological chal-

lenges that reduce generalizability (e.g., exclusive focus on low-risk youths; Hayes, 2005;Piggott

& Wood, 2019). Together, such limitations have contributed to a gap between conferencing theory

and practice, where the evidence base does not represent many real-world conferencing programs,

and the mechanisms through which conferencing may reduce recidivism remain untested

(Saulnier & Sivasubramaniam, 2015;Ward et al., 2014).

In this article, we attempt to address these limitations by (1) using life-course analyses to

estimate the effect of conferencing on recidivism among attendees versus non-attendees while

controlling for key risk factors, within-individual crime propensity, and the timing of conferencing

participation during adolescence, then (2) examining how attendance by different stakeholders

may be related to subsequent rates of recidivism, after controlling for key risk factors. The

conferencing program we investigated differs from programs investigated in prior research in

important ways. Typical conferencing programs divert the individual out of the justice system, but

the present program operates in the Children’s Court as an option prior to sentencing. As such,

youth participants in the current program are a higher-risk sample than considered in most prior

research, characterized by higher-severity and higher-frequency criminal histories and higher risk

for detention following sentencing. Importantly, in this program, conferences may proceed

without a direct victim, providing opportunity to more explicitly test associations between victim

interactions and subsequent recidivism.

The following sections provide context for the present study and rationale for the analytic

approach. We provide a brief overview of conferencing studies, focusing on two methodological

approaches: between-group studies that compare young people who participated in group con-

ferencing and those who did not, and within-group studies that compare various conference

characteristics among young people who participated in group conferences. The former studies are

Bonett et al. 73