This report summarizes information from a comprehensive review of the literature on restorative justice in U.S. schools. It updates and expands an earlier review on this subject, published by WestEd in 2016, and covers literature that was published or made publicly available between 1999 and mid-2018. The review captures key issues, describes models of restorative justice, and summarizes results from studies conducted in the field.

Restorative justice is a broad term and is used in this report to capture what the literature describes using a variety of terms, including “restorative practices,” “restorative approaches,” and similar language. The report describes restorative justice as encompassing “a growing social movement to institutionalize non-punitive, relationship-centered approaches for avoiding and addressing harm, responding to violations of legal and human rights, and collaboratively solving problems.”

This updated review was developed with funding from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of a larger effort of the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center (JPRC) to document the current breadth of evidence on restorative justice, provide a more comprehensive picture of how restorative practices are implemented in schools, and lay the groundwork for future research, implementation, and policy.