ABSTRACT
Introduction One of the key debates in restorative justice concerns the relative importance of processes and outcomes. In this chapter we turn our attention to the latter, and in particular the written outcome agreements which were produced in the context of restorative justice events. As we noted in Chapter 5, the three schemes which were subject to evaluation differed in regard to the importance they placed upon reaching and recording specific outcomes as part of the restorative justice process and this reflected their use of different models of restorative justice: mediation or conferencing. For JRC, which only used conferencing, discussion of outcomes formed the final part of all restorative justice events and a written outcome agreement was produced in the vast majority (98 per cent) of cases. The other two schemes, REMEDI and CONNECT, did not view a formal agreement as a necessary outcome of mediation, preferring to allow the participants to set and pursue their own agendas. REMEDI cases produced 11 outcome agreements from 35 mediations (4 adult and 7 youth cases), while the CONNECT scheme did not produce any written agreements.
