Source: (2008) Report of the fifth conference of the European Forum for Restorative Justice, Building restorative justice in Europe: cooperation between the public, policy makers, practitioners and researchers, Verona.
One critique of victim-offender mediation is the fact that the broader community, who is certainly an important stakeholder, is not involved, is not participating in the process like the victim and the offender and their relevant thirds, can’t express their feelings, formulate their grieves and questions etc. We know all that the community has a need to express their feelings, has a lot of questions… (cf. Belgian cases like the murder of Joe Van Holsbeek where 80.000 people came on the street to express their sympathy, to say no against senseless violence…). Although you can give this critic also on the present criminal justice system where the prosecutor represents the community, we want to explore in the workshop the question of it’s possible that the broader community participate in victim-offender mediation. Perhaps it can. Together with the media we can maybe involve the broader community in victim-offender mediation and make a communication between the offender, the victim and the broader community possible… (excerpt)
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