Victim Offender Mediation Research Paper

VICTIM OFFENDER MEDIATION AND THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM OF GHANA

Abstract

This paper evaluates Victim-Offender Mediation as a tool of Restorative Justice and explores how it could be developed and practiced in the Juvenile Justice System. Under Ghanaian Criminal jurisprudence, crime is deemed to be an act against the State although the offending act adversely affects the victim and the community or society at large. Victim-Offender Mediation offers the victim and the offender an opportunity to resolve their dispute between them with the aid of an impartial third party. In Victim-Offender Mediation, the parties are not restricted to the formal legal requirements of criminal jurisprudence, but rely on the parties to arrive at an appropriate

Among these are many Native American tribes within the United States, the Aboriginal tribes of Canada, the Maori in New Zealand, Native Hawaiians, African tribal councils, the Afghani practice of jirga, the Middle Eastern practice of Sulha, many of the ancient Celtic practices found in the Brehon laws and ancient Greek and Roman civilisations. The values of Restorative Justice are also entrenched in the ancient principles of Judeo-Christian culture that underscore crime as being a violation against people and families rather than "the state." Many provisions of the Old and New Testaments of the bible set the responsibility of offenders to personally repair the harm that has created a breach in the "Shalom

In a typical mediation setting, the parties with the assistance of a neutral third party work toward arriving at a mutual resolution of the dispute based on the assumption that each party contributed to the conflict. Victim- Offender Mediation is a distinct form of mediation; it begins with an innocent victim and his offender, who already admits to committing the offence. In such a situation the goal of determining retribution is not at issue, the main objective is to get the parties to communicate with each other. The parties are not very much interested in negotiating a settlement but more concerned with confronting and communicating with each other.

Victim-Offender Mediation differs from Mediation in that the mediator applies a more humanistic model of mediation, which concentrates on establishing dialogue between the victim and offender, with emphasis on victim healing, offender accountability and restoration of losses as against settlement driven