Restorative Justice
Justice with mercy
Australia spends $159,510 every year to incarcerate one person. It is the most expensive thing we do to someone who has broken the law. And for 40% of them, we do it again within two years.
That is not justice. That is an industry of failure — expensive, predictable, and entirely avoidable.
Restorative justice doesn’t ask whether someone deserves punishment. It asks a harder question: what does it take to actually stop this from happening again? The answer, consistently, across every country that has tried it seriously, is not longer sentences. It is accountability, rehabilitation, and the conditions that make a different life possible.
Justice with Mercy is not about being soft on crime. It is about being serious about outcomes: for victims, for communities, and for the people we currently warehouse at $159,510 a year and release, largely unchanged, back into the same conditions that brought them to us in the first place.
Why Restorative Justice
And the Risks of Doing Nothing
Australia’s justice system is expensive, persistent, and largely ineffective at the one thing it’s supposed to do, stop people from reoffending. It catches. It punishes. It releases. And then it catches again.
Restorative justice starts from a different question. Not “what punishment does this person deserve?” but “what does it actually take to stop this from happening again?”
The answer, consistently, across every serious trial of the approach, is not longer sentences. It is accountability, rehabilitation, and the conditions that make a different life genuinely possible.
30%
Indigenous Australians in our prison population. Less than 4% of the general population.
This is not a crime statistic. It is a policy statistic. Indigenous Australians are not more likely to commit crimes; they are more likely to be policed, charged, remanded, and convicted for the same behaviours that other Australians are cautioned or diverted for.
The overrepresentation in our prisons is the end point of a pipeline that begins with poverty, dispossession, and underfunded community services. Restorative justice intervenes in that pipeline before it ends in a cell.
40%
Of people released from Australian prisons reoffend within two years.
We spend $159,510 per person per year on a system that fails 40% of the time by its own measure. Prison, as currently designed, does not rehabilitate; it warehouses.
People enter with problems: addiction, trauma, mental illness, homelessness, and unemployment. They leave with a criminal record added to the same problems, and less capacity to address any of them. The reoffending rate is not a failure of the people in the system.
It is a failure of the system itself.
$159,510
Annual cost of incarcerating one person, less than an average degree.
We spend $159,510 per person per year on a system that fails 40% of the time by its own measure. Prison, as currently designed, does not rehabilitate; it warehouses.
People enter with problems: addiction, trauma, mental illness, homelessness, and unemployment. They leave with a criminal record added to the same problems, and less capacity to address any of them. The reoffending rate is not a failure of the people in the system.
It is a failure of the system itself.
The cost of the current system is not just financial, though $159,510 per person per year is a number that demands attention. The cost is human. Families separated. Communities destabilised. People are released worse than they entered, into the same conditions that brought them to the system in the first place.
The cycle is not inevitable. It is a choice made in budget allocations, in sentencing guidelines, in the decision to build more prisons rather than fund the programs that make prisons unnecessary.
What We propose
- Prevention over punishment: Fund community-based early intervention, diversion programs, and youth justice conferencing that address the conditions that lead to offending before they result in charges.
- Rehabilitation as the primary purpose of incarceration: Education, mental health treatment, addiction support, and employment pathways must be the core function of every correctional facility — not optional extras for compliant prisoners.
- Culturally appropriate justice for First Nations communities: Community-controlled justice programs, on-Country sentencing options, and Indigenous-led diversion initiatives have demonstrated outcomes that the mainstream system consistently fails to achieve.
- Victim-centred restorative processes: Where appropriate and with full consent, restorative justice conferencing gives victims a genuine voice in the process — and evidence shows it produces higher satisfaction and lower reoffending than traditional sentencing.
- End remand for non-violent offences: Thousands of Australians are held in remand — unconvicted — because they cannot afford bail. This is not justice. It is poverty criminalised.
For more information on Restorative Justice, check out RMIT’s Centre for Innovative Justice or the National Justice Project.
Check out the full range of WeRise policies on the WeRise homepage.
Justice with Dignity in the Real World: Global Trials and Lessons
Norway
A Model of Rehabilitation
Prisons designed for dignity, not punishment. Focus on education, trust, and reintegration.
World’s lowest recidivism rate (~20%).
New Zealand
Māori-Focused Restorative Programs
Community-led justice initiatives prioritising healing, accountability, and cultural reconnection.
Stronger outcomes for youth and Indigenous offenders.
Australia – ACT
The Alexander Maconochie Centre
Australia’s first “human rights prison” aimed at rehabilitation and reintegration.
Innovative on paper, but under-resourced in practice.
USA
Youth Diversion & School Programs
Restorative justice adopted in schools and juvenile systems to reduce suspensions and incarceration.
Lower reoffending, improved community trust.
Ontario