Since 2007, an organisation called ‘Slachtoffer in Beeld’ offers victims and juvenile delinquents the opportunity to engage in victim-offender dialogue. Since 2010, it is also possible for adult offenders to engage in victim-offender dialogue. Van Montfoort Advisory evaluated the implementation of victim-offender dialogue in 2010. The article sums up the most relevant conclusions of the evaluation, with a focus on conclusions related to victims. Results related to the internal implementation at ‘Slachtoffer in Beeld’ and the external implemention at organisations who refer to victim-offender dialogue are presented. Numbers of referrals are shown. It is striking to see that most referrals are coming from organisations working with offenders, even though victim-offender dialogue is, given the parlementary history, primarily an offer for victims. In the article reasons are given to explain the difference between the number of referrals from victim oriented organisations and offender oriented organisations. At the end possible effects of victims-offender dialogue on victims are presented.

In the past decades the social intuitionist approach to moral psychology has eclipsed rationalist models. The social intutionist approach considers emotions to be a driving force in moral judgement, while reasoning most often functions as a post hoc rationalisation of the initial emotion. This article argues that the social intutionist approach is also applicable to the choice and preferences victims make and have while navigating the criminal justice system. This is illustrated through two recent evaluations of victims experiences in the Netherlands: an evaluation of the Dutch victim-offender encounters and the oral and written Victim Impact Statements (VIS). It is shown that participation in the former programme is a function of low emotional impact, while participants in the VIS-schemes present with high levels of anxiety and anger, and exhibit signs of possible posttraumatic disorder. The implications of these findings are discussed and framed in terms of the social intuitionist model of moral psychology.

This article sketches some important tendencies in the attention for victims of crime, including in supranational regulation, with regard to the position of the offender and possibilities for restorative justice. The evaluation of victim policy in Belgium offers a view on this topic: victims have certain expectations towards the justice system and pose questions with regard to the offender. A third issue regards the place of restoration within the whole range of consequences of crime for victims: what is the meaning of ‘harm’ and what is the content of ‘restoration’ for victims? A last topic considers the openness of victim assistance programmes with regard to the offender dimension and possibilities of restorative justice. This article thus evaluates the possible link between victim assistance and restorative justice.

The position of victims of crime has shown marked improvement over the past 30 years. The rise of the victim has been associated with the growth of a unified ‘victim movement’; a social movement that strives to improve the position of victims of crime. However, it is questionable whether the victim movement should be viewed as a unitary phenomenon. Instead of one movement, there appear to be a number of victim movements. There are differences between the victim advocates in the United States, Victim Support in Europe, the violence against women movement and proponents of restorative justice.. In this article, reasons for these differences are sought in victim-endogenous factors: differences in victims’ characteristics and the idealtypes employed by the different movements are an important explanation for the divergent development in organisations representing victims interests, which in turn influences their policy preferences. It is argued that advocates of restorative justice would benefit from understanding both the reality and the distortion involved in the idealtypes, including their own. This would allow proponents of restorative justice to adapt their practices in a manner that is both suitable and convincing to the representative and target group of the different victim movements.

Neighbourhood mediation has been practiced more than fifteen years in the Netherlands. In 2010 there was neighbourhood mediation in 160 municipalities. More than 7000 cases were handled. Volunteer mediators try to break through communication blockades and teach their neighbours to make agreements. They are successful in two thirds of the cases. This means that about 20.000 directly involved family members are participating in successful cases. The authors discuss some conditions, results and the central principles of Dutch neighbourhood mediation: communication on an equal basis, impartiality, responsibility to solve conflicts, autonomous action and the enhancement of security and quality of life.

Seemingly a difficult concept, participation in restorative justice can be understood better once the notion is broadened and operationalized. Therefore a proposal will be made here to first broaden the meaning of participation beyond participation of stakeholders and ‘community’ in the process as it is generally understood in restorative justice literature, and second break down the concept of participation into five different levels: (1) involvement of the stakeholders and the ‘community’ in the restorative process; (2) participation of citizens as volunteer mediators/facilitators in the process; (3) self-referrals from citizens; (4) voluntary participation of experts in restorative justice organisations; (5) promotion from ex-victims of crime and ex-offenders. Based on this approach, in the end, the author opens up the discussion on the meaning of active citizenship for restorative justice in continental Europe. Before discussing how the broadening of the concept of participation is concretely envisioned, the author argues on the importance of prioritizing the notion of citizenship instead of ‘community’ in the continental European restorative justice discourse.

This article aims at grounding and defining the role of volunteers in restorative justice practices. It starts from the observation that processes of institutionalization tend to make the role of volunteering citizens in restorative justice programmes doubtful and superfluous. These doubts are strengthened by the fact that the link between restorative justice values and the importance of working with volunteers is too easily assumed. Can we offer some well-founded arguments to back up this assumption and to outline what key roles volunteers can play? Several conceptions of restorative justice might be explored. This contribution examines the maximalist view, as developed by Lode Walgrave in his latest book Restorative Justice, Self-interest and Responsible Citizenship. The article critically asks if and how his conception demands an active role for volunteers within restorative justice practices. The paper develops its arguments on the basis of three key concepts in Walgraves model: (1) his definition of restorative justice; (2) his notion of crime; and (3) his socio-ethical intuition of common self-interest.

This article departs from a crime prevention perspective following the definition of crime prevention as adopted by the European Union Crime Prevention Network (EUCPN). This approach handles a broad notion of community involvement in crime prevention, including non-judicial measures and models of intervention. Through its participatory approaches, restorative justice has the potential of mobilising and reinforcing social capital and, therefore, of contributing to effective crime prevention and control. The community oriented approach is illustrated by the model of crime prevention and its possible connection to restorative justice as being developed in Hungary and promoted through various actions of the EUCPN.

In this article, the authors summarize some important methodological problems that may be encountered when studying the crime preventative effects of restorative justice. Studies mostly focus on tertiary preventative effects, namely the reduction of recidivism. Empirical research is in that regard mainly dealing with the effects of victim-offender mediation and conferencing practices. Some problems include the definitional issue (what can be considered as a restorative justice intervention?), the (quasi-)experimental design, the small size of samples and issues of comparability between different studies due to differences in e.g. follow-period or criteria for measuring recidivism.

On the basis of current definitions and approaches of restorative justice and crime prevention, and making use of a two-dimensional typology of crime prevention, this article develops a conceptual framework and seeks to offer points of connections and departure at the theoretical level between restorative justice practices and different models of offender-oriented, victim-oriented and community-oriented prevention. In order to face some of the present limitations of restorative justice, in particular the missing link to causes of crime at the societal-structural level, the author widens the perspective of restorative justice to the broader notion of ‘community justice’. The challenge for restorative justice is, then, to integrate polycentric problem-solving approaches into its operational models.

Restorative justice focuses on doing justice after the occurrence of an offence. It gives priority to deliberative encounters as the best way of achieving restoration. The ambition of the maximalist option of restorative justice is to modify the punitive apriorism in criminal justice into a restorative apriorism. One of the challenges is to unravel the socio-ethical and political intuitions that orient the option for restorative justice. Restorative justice is first of all an option based on socio-ethical considerations: aiming at restoration instead of accepting the punitive premise, and giving full space for deliberation processes among stakeholders instead of imposing a top down decision procedure. These social ethical grounds of restorative justice have a potential contribution to improving the quality of our democracies.

This article gives a complete and detailed overview of research evaluations and outcomes of restorative justice projects in the Netherlands over the past decades. It involves developments where clearly restorative justice inspiration was visible. The author describes restorative practices with juveniles and the so-called project ‘Herstelbemiddeling’ (restorative mediation) that started in the nineties. Most evaluations had positive outcomes, but nevertheless there was no continuation from the political side. The author also examines the introduction of the country wide ‘victim-offender conversations’ which are carried out by the national victim support organization. Although this choice is justified because of the vulnerability of some victims and the chance of revictimisation, the author questions if victim organizations can really - in the best interests of the victims – turn away from problems related to the (hardened) treatment of offenders. Victim-offender conversations are to be respected and to be continued, but they cannot be seen as a restorative justice practice.

In a column a journal editor or an author expresses his or her opinion on a particular subject.

In this article, the author evaluates whether the development of restorative justice in Belgium over the past ten years offers an opportunity to ‘celebrate’, as the Journal for Restorative Justice does. Developments in practice show that mediation is available at all stages of the judicial procedure for adult offenders and mediation and conferencing are available according to youth law. Research has been carried out on various topics, covering a variety of practices. Furthermore, it has elaborated the concept of restorative justice, inspired innovative practices and influenced policy-making. Belgium seems to be peculiar in the relation between practice, research and policy, which tend to influence one another. Compared to the Netherlands, Belgium does have more reasons to celebrate the development of restorative justice.