Why are some school-based restorative conferences not implemented?

Many school districts offer restorative conferences as a means to resolve discipline incidents. Yet, few studies closely examine their implementation processes. Unknown is why students who are referred for restorative conferences may, in fact, not ultimately participate in them. The current multimethod study examined 1,217 restorative conference referrals from two school years. Results showed that 60% of referrals (n = 714) culminated in restorative conferences with 40% never reaching completion. The most common reasons for noncompletion were that participants refused to proceed or facilitators deemed it not appropriate to bring the parties together. Further, more serious incidents of threat, assault, and student/staff conflict were less likely to result in a completed conference than more minor incidents. Given the need for equitable access to fully implemented conferences, sociodemographic characteristics of enrolled students were also examined as predictors of conference noncompletion. Compared to the conference-level predictors, there was a relatively weaker association between school demographic variables and conference noncompletion. Implications for addressing challenges that arise during the pathway from referral to completed restorative conference are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).