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Summary
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The New Zealand Youth Court is based on restorative justice principles in the sense that power is transferred from the state to the community. Family group conferences are used as a mechanism for producing a negotiated, community response; involvement of victims as key participants makes possible a healing process for both the offender and victim. The practices under the legislation reflect in part the introduction of Maori concepts into the system for responding to youthful offenders. The same model can, with minor modifications, be extended to adult offenders with the notion of community group conferences being used instead of family group conferences.
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