Characteristics of Restorative Justice Conferencing in a New Zealand Environmental Offending Context

Environmental crime not only harms the physical environment (trees, plants, rivers, animals) but also communities and individual connection with the environment. Restorative justice conferencing (a face-to-face encounter amongst stakeholders to a crime) attempts to understand the impacts of the crime and repair the harm occasioned. In New Zealand, a back-end model has been used which is embedded in the prosecution process. Sixty-nine conferences have reportedly considered a restorative justice process in the environmental offending context between the commencement of the Sentencing Act 2002 on 30 June 2002 and 31 December 2022, and we have the names of 56 judgments. This article brings together those judgments for analysis and commentary and is a central repository of such judgments which can be expanded as time goes by.