Restorative Justice and Sexual Assault

As restorative justice (RJ) has grown in popularity worldwide, mainly in the response to youth crime, controversy surrounds its use for sexual, partner, and family violence cases. With some exceptions, all jurisdictions have put these offences beyond the reach of RJ for both youth and adult offenders, and thus, empirical evidence is lacking. This paper presents findings from an archival study of nearly 400 cases of youth sexual assault, which were finalized in court and by conference or formal caution over a 6 year period in South Australia, to address these questions: (1) What differentiates a court from a conference case? (