Victim-Offender Mediation in Germany

Source: (2004) Newsletter of the European Forum for Victim-Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice. 5(1): 2-3. Downloaded 25 August 2004.

In this article, Arthur Hartmann and Hans-Jürgen Kerner report on the history and current status of victim-offender mediation (VOM) in Germany. The practical implementation of victim-offender mediation in Germany began in 1985 with a few experimental projects concentrating on juveniles or adolescents. In the next decade there was a rapid rise in the number of new VOM projects. However, most of them had only a small caseload. At the same time that VOM developed in practice, a legal framework for VOM in Germany was enacted. Against this background, the authors provide key statistics on VOM in Germany with respect to numbers and types of cases, acceptance among victims and offenders, practices or processes, content of VOM agreements, and outcomes.