Restorative Justice and Mediation in Penal Matters

The publication at hand, consisting of two volumes totalling more than 1,000 pages, is a comprehensive database of insights into the European RJ landscape. It includes individual accounts of the state of affairs of RJ in 36 European countries. These accounts have been drawn together in a comprehensive analysis in the last chapter of Volume 2, which provides an overview of that RJ landscape, in terms of what forms of RJ there are in Europe today, how widespread they are, how they tie in to the criminal procedure and what the driving-force for their introduction has been. Chapter 38 also investigates the role that RJ plays in the practice of the criminal justice system, and provides a comparative look at what the central obstacles to RJ have been, and what can be done, based on European experience and research, to overcome them. We hope that politicians, practitioners, legislators, researchers, students but also the general public all over Europe are attracted to this material, and that we can thus make a contribution to moving RJ, and all the potential it brings for offenders, victims and communities, away from the periphery of how offences are responded to, and more into the foreground.