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Abstract:

Though the crime victim’s central position in restorative programmes is undisputed, restorative justice’s use of the victim concept is unclear. Restorative academics and practitioners have been charged with lacking engagement as to defining who victims are and how they come to be classified as such. Restorative justice as a movement seems to have reflected little on its understanding of the concept of victim, which is considered problematic because restorative programmes are based on a number of assumptions about victims. Van Dijk (2006) and Pemberton et al. (2007) in this respect wrote about ‘the ideal victim of restorative justice’: restorative justice presupposes that victims are willing to accept apologies and forgive the offender, are not concerned with punishment but with compensation, are not frightened about meeting the offender and are sufficiently empowered to deal with the consequences of the crime and to participate in the case. But does this ‘ideal victim of restorative justice’ represent all victims? This is an important question because if it does not, restorative justice risks excluding some victims from its programmes. In this workshop, findings from a Belgian study on victims’ and offenders’ experience with the criminal justice system and a victim-offender mediation project will be presented with a view to determine the extent to which the victims involved in this study indeed meet these assumptions and thus meet restorative justice’s ideal victim image.