As an organisation committed to restorative justice and restorative practices, RPI recently lodged a submission to the Queensland Parliament’s Inquiry into the Youth Justice (Circuit Breaker) Amendment Bill 2026. We did so because the proposed legislation raises important questions about what accountability, rehabilitation, and community safety should mean in responses to serious youth offending.
The proposed Circuit Breaker model places considerable emphasis on rehabilitation, structured intervention, and reintegration. These are important objectives, and our submission recognises the Government’s commitment to improving community safety and reducing reoffending. However, we were struck by one important omission. While the legislation identifies supporting victims as one of its central objectives, it says little about how victims and communities are expected to participate in the process of accountability and repair that follows offending.
One of the central questions raised by the proposed legislation concerns the meaning of accountability. Restorative justice strongly supports accountability as a central objective of youth justice. However, it understands accountability as more than compliance with court orders or the successful completion of a program. From a restorative perspective, accountability involves recognising the impacts of offending, acknowledging those who have been harmed, and taking meaningful steps, where appropriate, to repair those harms. For young people, this also means that accountability should be developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and capable of supporting lasting behavioural change. In this regard, accountability therefore complements, rather than competes with, broader rehabilitative responses to youth offending.
Equally important is how reintegration is understood. While the proposed Circuit Breaker Bill seeks to change young people’s behaviour though targeted interventions, successful reintegration involves more than returning a young person to the community after a period of residential placement. Rather, reintegration is a relational process that involves rebuilding trust, restoring relationships where possible, and strengthening the family, school, workplace, and community connections that support long-term desistance from offending. From a restorative perspective, rehabilitation, accountability, reintegration, and the repair of harm are mutually reinforcing rather than distinct objectives.
These restorative principles shaped RPI’s submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry. We argue that supporting young people to understand the impacts of their offending, acknowledge those affected, and take meaningful steps to repair harm can strengthen, rather than undermine, rehabilitation. Likewise, while the proposed legislation places considerable emphasis on rehabilitation and reintegration, it provides comparatively little guidance on how victims and communities are expected to participate in processes of accountability, relationship repair, or reintegration.
These questions are particularly important given the likely overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people within Circuit Breaker. The Queensland Government has acknowledged that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children will be disproportionately affected by the proposed reforms. For RPI, this reinforces the importance of ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership, community organisations, and culturally grounded approaches to accountability, healing, and reintegration are central to the design and delivery of the program. Queensland already has considerable Indigenous expertise in these areas, and we believe this knowledge should play a central role in shaping responses to young people, families, and communities.
For these reasons, RPI’s submission made several recommendations regarding:
- Accountability of young people: Ensure accountability extends beyond program compliance to include acknowledgement of harm and meaningful opportunities for repair.
- Victim participation: Create clear, voluntary, and well-supported pathways for victims to participate in restorative processes where appropriate.
- Restorative pathways: Better integrate the Circuit Breaker proposal with Queensland’s existing restorative justice framework.
- Repair of harm and reintegration: Recognise reintegration as a relational process involving families, victims, and communities.
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership: Strengthen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership in the design, governance, and delivery of the program, recognising the importance of community-led, culturally grounded approaches to accountability, healing, and reintegration.
- Evaluation: Measure success not only through recidivism, but also through accountability, relationship repair, victim participation, and community outcomes.
Youth justice is ultimately about more than responding to offences. It is about responding to people: young people, victims, families, and communities whose lives have been affected by offending. Restorative justice and practices seek to bring these relationships back into view, recognising that accountability, rehabilitation, repair, and reintegration are most effective when they are pursued together rather than in isolation. We hope our submission contributes constructively to this important conversation and highlights the valuable role restorative approaches can play in building safer, stronger, and more connected communities.
Margaret Thorsborne | 16 July 2026
Chair, Restorative Practices International
This submission would not have been possible without the help of RPI member Dr William Wood, Senior Lecturer in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University
