The fourth conference of the European Forum, Restorative justice and beyond – an agenda for Europe, intended to broaden the perspective on restorative justice whilst retaining the core topic of ‘justice’. In this conference the European Forum, for the first time, explored in detail what lies beyond the ‘classical’ application of restorative justice.
The conference covered five major themes:
- restorative justice, peace-making and peace-building;
- community mediation, working towards justice in a broad sense – beyond the intervention of criminal law agencies;
- dealing with more severe crimes in a restorative way: exploring the place for restorative justice programmes that are not restricted to pre-trial diversion of petty offences;
- the school mediation movement is increasingly widespread, attempting to handle conflicts beyond – or rather before – the law according to the same principles as restorative justice, and beyond the traditional offender orientation that marks the criminal justice system;
- good practice for restorative justice, which is vital to establish a solid basis for the new approach to justice.
