The National Center on Restorative Justice’s Restorative Justice Laws Database was created as a resource for restorative justice advocates, practitioners, and researchers as well as policy-makers across the United States. Our aim is to organize and display in an easily navigated format the ways in which states have codified the use of restorative justice approaches.
Thank you to Shannon Sliva (University of Denver) and Thalia González (UC Law San Francisco) for their advisement and expertise throughout the process of creating this database. Thank you to Karen Sheu and Anna VanRoy for their data collection work.
This Restorative Justice Laws Database builds on an earlier legislative directory created in 2014 by Shannon Sliva in partnership with Carolyn Lambert (Georgia State University College of Law) and hosted by the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work from 2019 to 2024.
The laws included in this database were identified by conducting a search in Westlaw and LexisNexis using the terms visible under “Form of Practice” in the database search options below. Only laws that feature one or more of these terms are included in the database. Use of the terms in the text of the law does not necessarily mean that restorative justice practice is occurring in the given jurisdiction.
The NCORJ is committed to continuing to update this database. If you see something that is missing or a correction is required, please be in touch. For more information about the development of the database, to get assistance navigating it, or to request a copy of the raw data for research purposes, please contact Lindsey Pointer (lpointer@vermontlaw.edu).
(b) The board shall form an executive steering committee that includes, but is not limited to, a balanced and diverse membership from relevant state and local government entities, community-based treatment and service providers, and the formerly incarcerated community. The committee…
(3) Funds allocated to probation pursuant to this act shall be used to provide supervision and rehabilitative services for adult felony offenders subject to local supervision, and shall be spent on evidence-based community corrections practices and programs, as defined in…
(B) Grants shall be awarded to fund programs that provide insight-oriented restorative justice and offender accountability programs that can demonstrate that the approach has produced, or will produce, positive outcomes in department facilities, including, but not limited to: (i) Increasing…
(a)(1) The Legislature finds and declares that the purpose of sentencing is public safety achieved through punishment, rehabilitation, and restorative justice. When a sentence includes incarceration, the deprivation of liberty satisfies the punishment purpose of sentencing. The purpose of incarceration…
The primary purpose of the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center shall be to provide humane confinement, rehabilitation and education programming, restorative justice, industrial and other training, treatment, and care to persons confined therein.
(b) The primary objective of adult incarceration in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shall be to facilitate the successful reintegration of the individuals in the department’s care back to their communities equipped with the tools to be drug-free, healthy,…
(b) The court presiding over a criminal matter shall consider alternatives to incarceration, including, without limitation, collaborative justice court programs, diversion, restorative justice, and probation.
(15) For the victim, to be notified of the availability of community-based restorative justice programs and processes available to them, including, but not limited to, programs serving their community, county, county jails, juvenile detention facilities, and the Department of Corrections…
(a) It is the public policy of this state that the principal goals of sentencing for hate crimes, are the following: […] (3) Restorative justice for the immediate victims of the hate crimes and for the classes of persons terrorized…
(c) A participating district attorney’s office may contract with a qualifying community-based organization for the duration of the pilot. The community-based organization shall have experience working with currently or formerly incarcerated individuals and their support networks, and shall have expertise…