Feasibility Report on Restorative Community Conferencing Finds Impact and Potential to Scale

In December 2013, The California Endowment funded the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) and Third Sector Capital Partners, Inc. (Third Sector) to conduct a feasibility study on restorative community conferencing (RCC) to better understand its potential to be used in a Pay for Success (PFS) project. RCC shows promise as an intervention that could be scaled through PFS given its preventive focus and the promising initial outcomes of youth served through RCC.

NCCD and Third Sector focused their feasibility analysis on Alameda County, California, where the Community Works West RCC Intervention currently serves 75 youth annually. Through this assessment of RCC in the context of PFS, we believe that governments should consider PFS contracting as an innovative tool to scale RCC services, although establishing RCC and scaling services need to be carefully considered.

The feasibility report, published last week, presents the following findings:

  • An analysis of available data gathered since 2012 has revealed that of the young people who completed the Community Works West RCC Program, 26.5% were rearrested, compared with 45.0% of a matched sample of youth whose cases were processed through the juvenile justice system.
  • Notably, only 11.8% of the RCC youth were subsequently adjudicated delinquent—that is, determined by the court to have committed another delinquent act—compared with 31.4% of the matched sample of youth whose cases were processed through the juvenile justice system.

Read a summary of the report here and the full report here.