Rehabilitation

The idea of restorative justice has been much talked about in the last decades. Distinguishing between a retributive and a restorative model, it has sometimes been argued that the idea of restorative justice stands for a ‘paradigm shift’ in the criminal law system. Mediation has become an integral part of many European criminal justice systems: although there were many unsolved problems at the beginning. As it was pointed out in the Handbook of Criminology, these problems covered a wide variety of details, ranging from the unclear role of reparation and compensation within the context of the criminal justice system to the consequences of the idea of restorative justice for the mass of ‘victimless’ crimes. However, the lack of a conclusive concept of restorative justice could have been left unnoticed, as a considerable progress of the idea of restorative justice could be observed in many European legislations during the last decades. Read more… (Petra Ágnes Kanyuk)