Is Anyone Compelled to Attend an RJ Conference?
No. Attendance at the conferences tested by the Justice Research Consortium will be entirely voluntary on the part of offenders, victims, and their communities. Offenders will not even be asked if they would like to participate in such a conference unless they indicate that they accept responsibility for having committed the crime with which they were charged. If they agree to participate in the project, then the victims will be asked if they would like to participate as well. Only when both victims and offenders agree to participate voluntarily will a case become eligible for the controlled field test, in which half of the willing parties are selected by equal probability for an RJ conference to be conducted.
