We’re reviewing the Restorative Justice (RJ) service. The review is an information gathering exercise to understand how the service is currently meeting the needs of participants. This will help us to understand what’s working well and what needs to be improved, which may be used to inform the future model of Ministry of Justice funded RJ in New Zealand.
The report was published in July 2023:
Restorative Justice Review Findings Report [PDF, 860 KB]
On this page:
The Ministry of Justice is completing a review of Restorative Justice (RJ) services to ensure that it meets the needs of people who participate in the service. The review is focused on gathering information from all parties involved with the service.
Restorative Justice (RJ) is an important service that aims to bring victims and offenders together to address harm that has occurred. It is important to ensure that the model continues to be safe and effective for all participants. Completing the review is the first step in helping ensure that the RJ service remains an appropriate and flexible justice service for New Zealanders.
We want to hear from the people and organisations involved with RJ to understand their experiences to gain an understanding on how well the current service meets the needs of participants.
We are currently be engaging with key stakeholder groups who are involved with RJ to gain insights and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the current model.
These stakeholder groups include:
People who have used the RJ service are in the best position to tell us how things are working. Therefore, the review has a special focus on hearing their first-hand, lived experience.
The voices of stakeholder groups and people who have attended the RJ service will form the basis of a final recommendations report. The endorsed recommendations report will be sent to all parties who contributed, as well as made publicly available.
*As classified by the Inland Revenue Department(external link).
We are applying a mixed-method approach to our engagement.
In 2021, Colmar Brunton(external link) conducted interviews with participants across the country about their experience of the RJ service.
We have two phases of engagement for the other stakeholder groups.
Phase one: we are meeting with people from each stakeholder group to hear their experience and thoughts about the RJ service. These engagements include interviews and/or small focus groups.
Phase two: involves publishing a survey, so that we can hear from a wider range of perspectives and test some of the information gathered during phase one.
Due to COVID-19 Alert Level changes, we had to reschedule some of our engagements to late 2021 and the first half of 2022.
We have finished with our engagement and the analysis of the information collected.
Due to delays in the review and sign out process, the final recommendations report will now be published in early 2023.
If you have any questions, you can email the project team at RjServiceReview@justice.govt.nz.
| June 2021 – November 2021 | Engagement with RJ providers |
| August 2021 - December 2021 | Participant interviews |
| December 2021 | Stakeholder survey published |
| October 2021 - February 2022 | Engagement with kaupapa Māori providers |
| February - April 2022 | Engagement with judiciary |
| April - May 2022 | Engagement with Court staff |
| April - June 2022 | Engagement with Police |
| June - October 2022 | Data analysis |
| July 2023 | Report and recommendations published |
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