ABSTRACT
It is not surprising that this volume is largely a product of New Zealand and New Zealanders. For all that restorative justice may be the oldest way of resolving disputes and conflicts throughout the world, it was New Zealand who took the world by surprise in the late 1980s by engineering and promoting its modern manifestation. The Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 courageously incorporated traditional Māori ways of dealing with crime and conflict with the introduction of family group conferences for addressing youth offending. This was the spark that ignited so much interest and enthusiasm around the world as a new way of ‘doing justice’ that recognized the limits of court-based justice in dealing with perpetrators.
