This article is an analysis of about 350 decisions of Dutch criminal courts since mediation was introduced as an instrument in criminal law (art. 51h of the Dutch criminal code). It appears that mediation not only benefits the offender in terms of reduction of punishment, but also has significant effects on other aspects of the domain of criminal justice. For example on complaints about the decision of the Public Prosecutor not to prosecute a suspect, the eligibility of the Public Prosecutor in a criminal procedure, claims for compensation of the victim, compensation for damage of the offender being in preventive custody, and costs of the offender for a lawyer to defend him in a criminal procedure. Although much progress can be made in applying mediation in criminal procedures, it is concluded that mediation is now an important form of restorative justice in the Dutch criminal justice system.

Restorative justice as implemented in many countries adopts a rather narrow approach, where responding to crime and other types of injustice is being restricted to the interpersonal level. ‘Society’ as important pillar in ­restorative justice does not play an ­important role in daily practice, and ­linkages to the institutional and political ­level are seldom established. Such practice risks to replicate or to strengthen structural inequalities in society. One possible strategy to deal with this challenge, is to engage in network oriented ­approaches in order to develop a better understanding of system injustices, and to contribute to more encom­passing and sustainable response mechanisms in society. Can and should the restorative justice movement build alliances with other social movements in order to realise this perspective? The article is structured along the following lines. First, various visions of ‘structural violence’ are reflected upon. Reference is made, for example, to the issue of ­(de)colonisation and concomitant forms of ‘epistemic injustice’. Considerable attention is given to the complexity and the multilayered nature of underlying causes of injus­tices in the respective social fields, and to the risk of simplification and polarisation in society but also within social movements. The discussion then fo­cuses on practices of dealing with conflict, diversity and participatory decision making within the respective social movements, and whether and how restorative justice can offer inspiration and practical support. Thirdly, broader strategies on social transformation are discussed, dealing with, for example, how the interchangeable roles of warrior and healer can be adopted, and how, at a more general level, restorative oriented partnerships can be formed.

This essay is a scientific reflection on Leuven Restorative City (LRC). The cities, which present themselves as ‘restorative cities’, aim to ensure that restoration continues to nestle in the capillaries of our society. The article argues that realizing the LRC-promise requires restorative thinking through the meso-level of local public life. This involves reference to a number of notions that can be traced back to Ancient Greek thought in Athens, in which the intellectual virtue of ­phronesis – practical wisdom in a social and political context – is central. Citizens are seen as allies in the solution of social issues. LRC contributes to this through its focus on ‘turning conflict into opportunities’. Restorative justice wisdom is more widely applicable in society. However, the LRC process can sometimes be erratic and unpredict­able. The article points to the possible alternation of good and bad periods, and puts forward the expectation that the development of restorative practices in Leuven can be understood as cascades. In these cascades, the course of the diffusion of restorative practices is presented in terms of successive waves of learning experi­ences and knowledge sharing.

Restorative justice practices and policies have been growing in Belgium during last three decades. This article looks in particular at policy developments in the Flemish Community. It reconstructs how restorative justice has adopted a legal basis in 2005 and 2006 respectively in adult criminal law and juvenile justice. The rise and fall of the Belgian model of ‘restorative prisons’ is discussed. Special attention goes to the role of the Belgian State reform process, where the regions were given more competencies also in restorative justice matters. We investigate how this process of devolution has shaped the restorative justice landscape for the sectors of penal mediation, restorative mediation and conferencing. Some ambivalences in policy making are shown. Moreover, in recent years there are signs of a declining political interest in restorative justice.

This article deals with restorative justice practices in Surinam. It is based mainly on anthropological literature and preliminary research findings of four indigenous villages in Surinam, and is part of a broader study of Indigenous and Marron communities. In these villages the age-old customary law approach to conflict remains a lively practice, especially in the rainforests where central authority has little influence. The author highlights a number of restorative aspects of indigenous (criminal) justice practices, such as the group conferencing model of the Krutu and the role of the community (rehabilitation). Other aspects are not at all restorative, such as cases of double punishment (ne bis in idem), corporal punishment and the lack of the possibility of appeal. Because the trend of opening the hinterland seems to be unstoppable, it is recommended to coordinate national law and customary law and improve cooperation between indigenous and central authority. The article gives some suggestions for reforming the Surinamese Penal Code.

This article analyzes the opinion of twenty-four Surinamese ex-convicted young men on restorative justice. The results were obtained through four focus group sessions and a concise survey form. The factors (a) type of offense, (b) seriousness of offense and (c) prevention of recurrence were discussed. The opinions are divided, but the majority is of the opinion that restorative justice can mainly work for serious and violent crimes. Fear of revenge appears to be a barrier to participation. Employment has been indicated as the key to real recovery of the offender and prevention of recidivism (and thus satisfaction for the victim). The results provide insight into the susceptibility to restorative justice among this specific group in Suriname.

Since the beginning of 2020 mediation in penal cases (mediation in strafzaken) has officially become the preferred intervention for victim-offender mediation in the criminal procedure in the Netherlands. Although mediation in general has a sound theoretical framework, the methodological elaboration appears pluriform and somewhat limited. In practice mediators in penal cases operate conform their own personal and professional standards and preferences, apparently without tailor made methodology. This article describes the current methodological directions such as transformative or narrative mediation and seeks for useful references. As a part of restorative practice, mediation in penal cases seems to remain secluded from insights and methodology developed in the domain of restorative justice practices. Educational institutes providing trainings for mediators barely refer to this theoretical framework. Besides a methodological reconnaissance this article offers a fundamental comparison of mediation styles and interventions, but is above all an incentive to further methodological research and development.

In this article, an analysis is made of two response models for different forms of abuse and violence that occurred in the past on children in institutional settings. Two programmes are compared, as they operated during last 10 years in Belgium: on the one hand the Centre of Arbitration for sexual abuse and violence in the Catholic Church at the national level, on the other hand the Commission for Recognition and Mediation for various types of abuse and violence in youth and educational institutions and other organisational contexts in the Flemish Community. Both models are analysed and compared at the conceptual and empirical level from a restorative justice approach, looking at the elements that may reveal a certain form of restorative justice and/or may contain lessons for the further development of restorative justice. The background and origins of both programmes are presented into detail, followed by a comparison with respect to the political options on the basis of their creation, the composition of their boards, their scope of application and their procedures. Some numbers and characteristics of cases dealt with are presented.
The analysis of both models points at the presence – in varying degrees – of important restorative justice elements as provided in the international literature. However, restorative justice standards are more prominent in the Flemish Commission for Recognition and Mediation as compared to the national Centre of Arbitration for sexual abuse in the Church. Both programmes also demonstrate that restorative action is needed at different, mutually interwoven levels: the personal (micro) level, the institutional (meso) level and the societal (macro) level. At the institutional and societal level the transformative potential of the interventions is very much needed, but also most challenging in terms of the development of effective restorative methods.

In this contribution, the authors take stock of the many diverse restorative justice programs that have been implemented in many countries, worldwide, over the past twenty years, and that have involved a number of problems. They also discuss a number of new developments and areas of concern, including victim participation, the relationship with common law, cases of serious crime and the role of the community. The authors hope the new UNODC Handbook on Restorative Justice Programmes to be as successful as the previous edition in promoting new ways to apply restorative justice principles in criminal matters and helping practitioners benefit from each other’s experience.

This article contains a plea for a further operationalization of the subsidiarity principle (penal law and punishment as ultimum remedium) through a maximalist restorative justice, i.e. a restorative justice that not only offers space for ‘voluntary processes’ and agreed restoration, but also for ‘compulsory procedures’ and imposed restoration. An attempt is made to make the maximalist arsenal of restorative sanctions as concrete as possible. Two examples of sanctions that are ‘constructed’ in a restorative way in this article, are restorative community service and restorative electronic home detention. This article is based on work by John Blad and Lode Walgrave that has previously appeared in Tijdschrift voor Herstelrecht.

The 20th anniversary of this journal is a good reason to glance back at developments with restorative justice for children and young people. Can we say that restorative youth justice has become mature? Some core events and articles about developments in Belgium, the Netherlands and elsewhere are discussed, paying attention to young suspects as well as victims. Subsequently, the embedding of restorative justice in youth laws is discussed. Finally, the article focuses on the question what should be done to improve the implementation into an effective, child friendly and ‘rights based’ youth sanction model.

Is the concept of ‘retribution’ compatible with restorative justice? Starting from the perspective that retribution is an imperative given and that restorative justice should be a preferent option in coping with crime, the concept of retribution needs to be redesigned. Rethinking retribution needs to take into account the hypersensitive nature and complexity of modern society. Apparently incompatible interests need to be reconciled, paying tribute to the citizenship of both the victim and the perpetrator. Notwithstanding censure to be in place, implying the infliction of ‘pain’, the aim must lie in a reconstruction of civil relationships affirming the victim and the perpetrator to be part of the community. Standards applied must reflect objectivity, implying proportionate punishment, with a preference towards restorative justice because it is the more subsidiary option. Thus, retribution notwithstanding the imperative and painful nature of retribution, the execution should pursue the reconstruction of (civil) relationships.

This article discusses the concepts of society and community involvement as they appeared in the articles of the Dutch-Flemish Tijdschrift voor Herstelrecht (Journal of Restorative Justice) during last 20 years. It shows how the journal from its very beginning adopted a strong focus on criminal justice reform, although restorative practices within the community occupied a considerable space in the consecutive volumes as well. Studies on restorative justice programmes in Belgium and The Netherlands, such as victim-offender mediation and family-group conferences, revealed a predominant orientation on interpersonal relationships stressing the role of the community of care. In the same sense, also community mediation and other community oriented restorative practices focus on the personal well-being of people and the improvement of personal and social relationships. Hence, both theory and practice face two important challenges in developing restorative justice: (1) which role to give to a larger community and how to operationalize its involvement, and (2) how to deal with underlying causes of crime and social-structural injustices? Referring to European action-research projects and to conceptual models developed outside Europe, a case is made for designing restorative justice methodologies and programmes involving civil society in a more encompassing way and linking micro to macro societal levels. Developing strategic alliances with new social movements could be the way forward.

Why and how mediated contact between victims and offenders (and members from their networks) leads to positive outcomes, remains a difficult question to answer. Not surprisingly therefore, this topic has been the focus of attention of multiple articles in the past twenty years of this journal. In this contribution, the inspiring article of Borbala Fellegi (2008), titled ‘Explaining the impact of restorative justice. The “4-way interaction” of morality, neutralisation, shame and bonds’ is celebrated. Fellegi presents a theoretical framework in which the added value of restorative, mediated victim-offender meetings for the re-integration of offenders is outlined compared to other judicial responses to crime. Central to her argument is that the mediation process affects in particular the four criminogenic factors mentioned in the title. In this contribution two innovative, working mechanisms of the mediation process that she proposes, are highlighted. First, the preparation phase in which the neutral mediator initiates and facilitates discussion of the crime and its consequences for the victim(s) with the offender. Fellegi proposes that this mechanism can (start to) lift the criminogenic factor moral reasoning of the offender. Second, the restorative focus of the encounter itself between the victim and offender, in which both parties can express how they were affected, express their emotions (such as shame feelings of the offender) and discuss jointly how restoration and reparation might be achieved. This should reduce the criminogenic factor neutralisation, increase moral reasoning, and might contribute to integrative social bonds between the parties and their networks. Thus, Fellegi’s work has made innovative suggestions about the working mechanisms of victim-offender mediation – these suggestions offer useful hypotheses that can be tested empirically.

This article states that the social and political context in which restorative justice is situated, needs more attention. The polarized rhetoric of populists with their plea for more state control and repression does not fit with the restorative approach with its emphasis on inclusion and social responsibility of active citizens. The author suggests that the paradigm of ‘positive security’ as coined by Marc Schuilenburg and others could function as a base for an alternative, more constructive and inclusive ‘big story’ on crime and security that is more akin to restorative justice. Aspects of current social protest movements as the MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and climate demonstrations could be integrated in this ‘big story’, also to prevent that restorative justice is viewed only as a quick fix to soothe symptoms and not address political and social root causes of injustice. In this way, the international restorative justice movement could widen its scope.

This essay focuses on John Blad’s views on the sanction concept of restorative justice and the punishment concept of criminal law. What is the status of a restorative sanction? How does that sanction differ from imposed criminal sanctions?

‘The victim’ is an important figure in restorative justice, but who is this victim? In this article, I will review articles published in this journal between 2005 and 2019 in order to establish the characteristics of victims recognized in the field of restorative justice. It first needs to be noted that there is not one homogeneous victim group. The diversity in victims and their needs calls for research investigating when, for whom, and under which circumstances restorative justice practices lead to victim satisfaction. Many articles reviewed address this question. When I nevertheless try to extract an ideal type of victim of restorative justice, it seems that the victim is agentic and resilient, expresses a wide range of emotions, prioritizes reparation over punitive measures and is overall very satisfied with the restorative justice practice.

This article considers Christopher D. Marshall’s proposal to draw a connection between the ethics of care and restorative justice. The ethics of care tradition is critical of the modern liberal interpretation of morality as a rational endeavor based on universal principles. The article attempts to spell out the ethical and political implications of adopting this fundamental viewpoint in the context of restorative justice. On the ethical level, the ethics of care may remind the tradition of restorative justice of its essential reliance on the concrete moral practices and competences of people that precede any conceptualized normative ethics. On the political level, an ethics of care approach to restorative justice seems to lead to a certain deadlock in that it fails (and refuses) to offer a rational justification of restorative justice practices. On a closer look, the ethics of care can provide such a justification, be it a ‘communitarian’ one.

Christopher Marshalls is convinced that restorative justice has to do with care for relational involvement. That view is intuitively convincing but not particularly clear. Recent psychological and philosophical research has recently devoted much attention to notions such as ‘collective intentionality’ (Searle, Tomasello) and ‘joint commitment’ (Gilbert). This kind of research is situated and discussed in this paper. We indicate how the restoration of mutual involvement can be reinterpreted from the perspective of this research. This exercise shows that caring for relationships should not be interpreted in a sentimental way. In law and in restorative justice, it does not have to be the intention to enter into more personal relationships with each other. Rather, it is the intention to make it possible once again to develop mutual understanding, respect and compassion from our common universal human commitment.

As an approach to law and justice, restorative justice focuses squarely on addressing human needs; it acknowledges the equal dignity of all parties, irrespective of their role in the harmful act; it accepts responsibilities for addressing the disadvantages or inequities that crime has bequeathed to victims and that often have contributed to offending on the part of the perpetrator; and it derives its creative potential from the shared vulnerability and reciprocal exchange of concern that occurs through respectful face-to-face encounter. Therefore restorative justice constitutes a relational justice of care.