Restorative justice principles and practice

Restorative Justice:

With the research conducted between the years 1997 and 1998 in the United States and Europe shows that the rate of crime was high and the culprits were never given any chance to defend themselves whenever they appeared before the court of law. This made the courts to be full and the prisons to be overcrowded as criminals saw that there was no justice in their rulings. It is through this that the judges, probation officers, prosecutors, lawyers, advocates and the police sat down and came up with a program that would enable the culprits to defend themselves and to feel that justice has been practiced.

The adopted measures have been considered under the restorative justice dialogue, which has become a common practice. While there are four forms of restorative justice, the emphasis of these programs has been to always involve victims and offenders in dialogue. Most of these forms of restorative justice incorporate direct dialogues that are sometimes carried out face-to-face. These conversations are conducted in the presence of at least one third person who acts as the facilitator, mediator, circle keeper or convener (Umbreit, Vos & Coates, 2006).

The implementation of the victim offender mediation whose main concerns are to allow the criminal to have the exact picture of what pains he/she has caused to the victim, to enable the criminal to identify and give an explanation on the main cause of the crime. This process also enables the two parties to be able to reconcile and to enable the culprit to change his/her behavior. This implementation only took place in the courts in which the law breakers and the victims were given an opportunity to have a dialogue only if the two parties come to an agreement. From this dialogue the agreement was put down in a written form and signed by both parties, which showed what conclusion they have made.

The attractiveness of the victim-offender dialogue as a form of restorative justice is evident from the fact that since it was started, the rate of crimes has reduced drastically in the United States and in Europe. In the victim offender mediation process, a qualified mediator gives his/her verdict based on agreement signed during the mediation process or according to the crime committed. The verdicts that are based on the mediation process have mostly been termed as small cases which don't need much investigation and such like cases are common with the youths. An example of such a case is fighting without a proper reason and that leads to injury which forces one party to go for a medical checkup.

The offenders are also allowed to express their feeling during the process and with intervention of the qualified mediator, the crime is handled successfully and this enables the offenders to walk out a free person ("Victim-Offender Mediation," 2007). The other cases like robbery with violence, killings, fraud, rape, child molestation among others are treated according to the law. In such cases the police are given opportunity to conduct thorough investigations after which they present their findings before the court of law and the judges go through them before the judgment day. The judges would give their ruling according to what is presented before them and based on the rule of law. In this process, there is no mediation process allowed since the verdict is based on the judges unlike the first one where the verdict is based on the qualified mediator.