While most restorative justice research would suggest that victims and offenders are often satisfied with their experiences, the number of referrals to these type of programs remain low. This lack of accessibility was the topic of the European Forum for Restorative Justice project, ‘Accessibility and Initiation of Restorative Justice’. This article reports on the project’s findings with regard to several factors which limit greater accessibility, as supported by the attitudes of referral bodies and restorative justice practitioners examined in the frame of this project. The results of previous research and the current empirical research illustrate how accessibility is hindered by (1) lacking or insufficient restorative justice legislation, (2) exclusion criteria regarding which cases may be suitable to restorative justice procedures, (3) a lack of knowledge among legal actors, restorative justice practitioners and the general public about restorative justice and its benefits, (4) the persistence of a retributive legal culture within criminal justice and (5) a need for greater cooperation among those who are involved whether as referral bodies or mediators or facilitators. Qualitative data is presented to provide a better understanding of these elements, in addition to potential solutions that were reported by the respondents. Furthermore, the authors take a closer look at the current situation in the Netherlands, including an overview of the trainings that were developed within the Accessibility project. The results of these trainings reinforce the factors that were identified by previous research and the current empirical research, and aimed to look for solutions to the main barriers to greater accessibility.

In this article we describe the mediation practice that exists at the prosecution office in Maastricht/Limburg and which was established in 1999. First, we summarize the main results of our earlier study on the relation between mediation and recidivism/reoffending rates on the basis of the Maastricht mediation model. In the remaining part of this article, we focus on answering the question whether the main results of our earlier study differ when we distinguish between adult (23 years and older) and juvenile (under 23 years) offenders. In order to answer this question several extra analyses have been carried out. The main conclusion of this article is that offenders with whom is mediated, reoffend significantly less than offenders who got a regular criminal sanction – regardless of whether the offenders are older or younger than 23 years.

This article studies the position of young victims in restorative justice and mediation. First we study the literature, which shows that although young victims may have specific needs, their position within restorative justice remains underexposed. Therefore, we have set up a small explorative study in the beginning of 2015. Through nine interviews with young victims who have gone through a mediation process in Flanders, we sought to answer three central questions. The article discusses whether these victims were satisfied with the mediation process, whether they could have a say in the process and what the importance was of having support persons throughout the mediation process.
We found that the participation of the parents does influence the mediation process, since the parents are the main support persons for the young victim. Other support people are seldom present in the process, although some victims wanted the school or a friend to participate. Most of the young victims found they had a say in the process, but the presence of the parents could be an impediment in that regard. Young victims interviewed were generally satisfied with the mediator and mediation process, but not always with the outcome of the mediation. Ensuring that these young victims really get a say in the process proved to be a point of attention for practice.

This article stems from a practice-oriented research on restorative justice and perceptions of conflict in a poor neighbourhood in Brussels: the Anneessens district. The first part of the article focuses on the conceptual shift from a crime-oriented towards a conflict-oriented restorative justice, including the search for a user-friendly working definition of ‘conflict’. The classical restorative justice story receives a facelift in order to address metropolitan challenges. The second part analyses 41 walking interviews of residents, focusing on conflict themes and zones. The third part cautiously checks the working definition in the frame of the analysed data. A provisional conclusion entails that the notion of crime and its related meanings should not be discarded too quickly.

Intercultural communication is often portrayed as communication between people with a different ethnic or national background. People may interpret differences and misunderstandings arising in communication as especially grand and problematic. Sometimes, people see the reason for a difference in opinion or the conflict to be situated within the other (often national or ethnic) culture. They see themselves and others as a member of a different group, with a different culture and thus claim the differences to be related to the culture and not the individual person (culturalising or culturistic approach). This approach entails certain risks when it is seen as a condition to be able to speak to others and when handled as the sole frame of reference to interpret people’s meaning-making. An alternative approach can be found in a systemic and communication-theory approach, linking it to intersectionality, pluralism, diversity competence and the TOPOI model, as this article explains.

This article describes the European research project ALTERNATIVE, which studies the possible implementation of restorative justice approaches in intercultural conflicts. Besides theoretical research into concepts such as justice, security, conflict (transformation) and restorative justice, action-research was implemented in four diverse intercultural settings (Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Northern Ireland). In order to compare those settings, an innovative comparative research method was developed through which the various realities are ‘thickly described’ within evaluation grids. The article describes the different aspects of the research and reflects upon the question whether a more broad understanding of restorative justice, surpassing the judicial sector and aspects, is emerging.