Working Offenders
An evaluation of the impact of restorative cautioning: findings from a
This study follows on from previous research into Thames Valley police's restorative cautioning initiative (Hoyle et al., 2002), which found that around one-quarter of offenders either stopped or reduced their offending because of the restorative caution. It evaluates the impact of restorative cautioning and the effect it has had on reconviction in the Thames Valley area.
Title: An evaluation of the impact of restorative cautioning: findings from a reconviction study
Author: Aidan Wilcox, Richard Young and Carolyn Hoyle
Series: Findings 255
Date published: November 2004
Number of pages: 4
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What is restorative cautioning?
In contrast to traditional cautions, restorative-cautioning aims to encourage the offender to take responsibility for repairing the harm caused by their offence. A restorative caution is a meeting facilitated by a trained police officer, based around a structured dialogue about the offence and its implications (with active involvement from the offender and the victim, if present).
The Study
The impact of restorative cautioning has been explored by comparing all cautions in Thames Valley with traditional cautions in Sussex and Warwickshire. It also compares the different caution types in Thames Valley to see which is the most effective at reducing the chance of an someone re-offending.
Between 1998 and 2001 almost 20,000 cautions were issued. Of these around 30% cautions were traditional cautions and 70% administered according to a 'restorative script'. The current evaluation finds out how many of these have re-offended.
76% of offenders in the sample as a whole (i.e. all three areas) were male, and 38% were aged 17 or under. The most common offences leading to caution were:
theft and handling (33%)
crimes of violence (17%)
drugs (17%).
Reconviction in this report is referred to as resanctioning because it includes cautions, final warnings and reprimands, as well as convictions.
Key Findings
There was insufficient evidence to suggest that restorative cautioning was more effective than traditional cautioning in terms of reducing resanctioning rates but there was also no evidence to suggest it had increased resanctioning rates.
Resanctioning rates fell substantially in all 3 forces between 1998 and 2001, yet Thames Valley had the lowest rates for all 3 years.
When looking at each year separately, Thames Valley had significantly lower rates than Sussex for all 3 years and significantly lower rates than Warwickshire for the first 2 years, but not the third year.
Possible explanations for this include:There was no restorative effect - The initial advantage in Thames Valley may be due to other variables such as detection rates or socio-demographic differences.
Less strict restorative cautions (those deviating from the script) were used in the first year and might have been more effective than restorative cautions.
It may be that it was not the restorative qualities of the caution, which were important but the enthusiasm of facilitators for this new approach. This may have deteriorated.
The types of caution (restorative conferences, restorative cautions and traditional cautions) did not prove to be a good predictor of resanctioning in the Thames Valley area.
There were no statistically significant differences in terms of the frequency or seriousness of re-offending between offenders in Thames Valley compared with those in Sussex and Warwickshire.
The average number of offences leading to a sanction in the two years following the original caution was 3.8 in Thames Valley compared with 3.9 in Sussex and 4.1 in Warwickshire.
There were no evidence to suggest that restorative cautions or conferences had any positive or negative impact on resanctioning compared with traditional cautions.
The average number of offences leading to a sanction in the 2 years following the original caution was 3.8 for restorative conferences, 3.7 for restorative cautions and 4.0 for traditional cautions.
The aims of restorative justice are broader than the reduction of crime – earlier research (Hoyle et al., 2002) suggested that the restorative cautioning initiative had delivered other benefits to both victims and offenders such as formal reparation agreements.
This study was unable to establish whether the restorative cautioning initiative made an impact on resanctioning rates or the seriousness and frequency of subsequent offending. The more positive findings of Hoyle et al. (2002) were not supported by the large-scale study reported here.
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Last update: Friday, August 03, 2007