Restorative Justice on Stolen Ground: Dispossession, Entrenchment, and Eurocentric Justice in Australia and New Zealand

Restorative justice (RJ) is frequently promoted as a redress for the overrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples in criminal justice systems and as a culturally appropriate alternative to state-based responses to offending. Advocates often characterize RJ as inspired by, or continuous with, Indigenous justice practices, and international scholarship has increasingly framed RJ as a “potentially” decolonizing practice. This paper challenges those claims in the context of Australia and New Zealand, arguing RJ is not well positioned to reduce overrepresentation or address broader injustices of criminal justice for Indigenous Peoples and communities. More than this, RJ may function as an impediment to more fundamental legislative, policy, and institutional changes. Our analysis identifies three interrelated problems: (a) dispossessive histories and ideologies underpinning claims of RJ's “indigeneity”; (b) RJ's entrenchment within the bureaucratic architecture of state criminal justice systems; and (c) the reproduction of colonial logics that obscure or sideline Indigenous struggles for sovereignty and self-determination. We conclude that efforts to “decolonize” RJ in Australia and New Zealand are not tenable within its current uses. Instead, RJ advocates must confront its limits and engage with Indigenous calls for justice that center sovereignty, land, and treaty as foundations for meaningful change.