Report on the status of the „Restorative Justice Project” Melinda Gyökös 4 June 2009 Pilsen

I.Project II.Objectives III.Project team & experts IV.Timetable V.Conference VI.Lessons learned

I.The Project „European best practices of Restorative Justice in the criminal procedure”  Proposed by Hungary (Ministry of Justice and Law Enforcement - IRM)  Included in the EUCPN WP by the decision of the Board (September 2007, Lisbon)  Co-financed by the specific programme „Prevention of and Fight against Crime” 2007 of the European Commission  Project JLS/2007/ISEC/FPA/C1/033

II.Objectives of the Project  Collecting good practices of RJ applied in the MSs at any stage of the criminal proceeding & in crime prevention  Systematizing good practices and identifying best practices based on comparative analysis  Dissemination of good practices through publication (through the EUCPN website and hard copies as well)

III.Project team & experts  Project team  professional & financial management  National Experts  provided data on RJ practices applied in the certain MS  presented RJ best practices at the conference  provide papers for the publication

IV.Timetable  January 2008 – March 2009  preliminary phase (collecting data, preparing the programme of the conference, finding speakers for the missing themes)  April 2009  conference in Budapest  May – October 2009  preparing the publication

V.Conference April 2009 Participants  32 speakers of 16 MSs (AT, BE, CZ, DE, FI, GR, HU, IE, IT, NL, PO, RO, SE, SI, SK, UK) & Croatia  representatives of 4 more MSs (EE, ES, FR, LV)  representatives of the EUCPN (chair, research officer, some NRs), COM, European Forum for RJ  110 Hungarian participants

V.Conference April 2009 (cont.) Presentations  38 presentations in 5 plenary sessions & 11 workshops  presentations on RJ practices applied in  crime prevention  pre-trial phase  during the trial  during the implementation of sentences

V.Conference April 2009 (cont.) Presentations on RJ practices applied in crime prevention  family group conferencing  school/peer mediation  social/community mediation (e.g. resolving minority/majority conflicts, post-war conflicts)

V.Conference April 2009 (cont.) Presentations on RJ practices applied in pre-trial phase & during the trial  for juvenile offenders  for adult offenders  by serious crimes (e.g. domestic violence, sexual crime, hate crime)

V.Conference April 2009 (cont.) Presentations on RJ practices applied during the implementation of sentences  prison mediation  community/restorative prison projects  restorative practices for prisoners before release

VI.Lessons learned  there is place for institutionalizing RJ practices as part of the criminal procedure, but introducing them only for reasons of law harmonisation might lead to ambivalent results  successful models applied in the criminal procedures of MSs where RJ practices are widely used outside the criminal justice system as well

Many thanks for your kind attention!