A Grotius project on victim-offender mediation youth offenders in Europe.

Source: (2004) Papers presented at the Third Conference of the European Forum for Victim-Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice, ‘Restorative Justice in Europe: Where are we heading?’, Budapest, Hungary, 14-16 October. Downloaded 22 September 2005.

The project “Victim-Offender Mediation: organization and practice in the juvenile justice systems�? was co-funded by the
European Commission Grotius II Criminal Programme (2002/GRP/029) from November 1st, 2002 to January
31, 2004 (15 months). The project was promoted and coordinated by Italy with two partners: Austria and
Belgium. Namely, I was the project coordinator and I was supported by a valuable leading group which
included the two partners: Christa Pelikan, Inge Vanfraechem and my Italian colleague Simona Ghetti as well.
The basic idea was grounded on the fact that EU member States are not only asked by the Council of Europe
to promote victim-offender mediation (Recommendation No. R(99)19), but they are specifically requested by
the EU Council to adapt their legislation to this aim by March 2006 (Framework Decision of March 15, 2001,
arts. 10, 17). As a consequence the information collected through this project was expected to be useful for
both participant and non participant countries.
Our general aim was to provide an overview of the state of the art concerning victim-offender mediation with
young offenders in the European states in order to provide updated comparative information regarding the
context, the organization, the structure, the financial and human resources needed for adopting victim-offender
mediation with youth offenders. In fact each country needs to set up these conditions as well as norms and
procedure permitting to carry out the mediation. (excerpt)