“Victim-Offender Mediation: Lessons from the Japanese Experience.”

Source: (1995) Mediation Quarterly 12(3):233-248.

This essay and review describes the critical features of the Japanese restorative justice model, arguing that these features are transferable to both North American and European institutional contexts. In emphasizing offender correction and restoration to the community, law enforcement authorities in Japan have learned that encouraging confession, remorse, victim compensation and victim pardon is essential to the correction of socially deviant behavior. The Japanese approach is at least partly transferable to Western nations. Victim-offender mediation must be expanded in concert with other reintegrative, community-based programs.