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Summary

Hartmann, Arthur and Michael Kilchling (1997). "The Development of Victim/Offender Mediation in the German Juvenile Justice System from the Legal and Criminological Point of View." In Restorative Justice for Juveniles: Potentialities, Risks and Problems, Lode Walgrave, ed., Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press.

The theoretical introduction shows that mediation in Germany is different from models such as, e.g., conferencing in Australia. The development of VOR in Germany is then reported in an account of three studies. The first is a report on the official court statistics. According to these statistics, compensation and mediation/VOR are still rather rare phenomena in Germany. The second study is a survey of the VOR projects collecting data on implementation and caseload. It turned out that in 1996 about 9000 VOR cases (offenders) had been dealt with. But the numbers of VOR cases differ considerably from region to region. Most projects have not more than 20 cases a year whereas a small number of projects with high caseloads deals with the majority of all VOR cases. The third evaluation is a documentation of VOR cases of 42 projects. This study reveals that more than 70% of VOR cases concern violent crimes. The acceptance of VOR among victims and offenders is still high.