Juhani Iivari is a researcher and practitioner in the area of victim-offender mediation (VOM) in Finland. Juhani served as a prison priest in the Helsinki County Prison, where he and two friends launched the first VOM pilot project in 1983. He worked with the project for five years.
In 1988, Juhani moved to the National Board of Social Welfare and Health (later National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES) as a planning officer.

In 1991, Juhani posed his thesis "Mediation of Crimes and Disputes in the Concept of Reflexive Justice" (concerning on international experiences and models of Mediation, empirical and theoretical study). He spent the next two years at the University of Montpellier in France through a program provided by the Research Academy of Finland.

In 1994, he returned to STAKES as Research Director of Poverty and Social Problems -programme which include

• deviance

• alternatives for imprisonment)

Since 1996, Juhani has been Docent in the University of Helsinki in Social Policy, especially in Social Work. He is also a member of the Board of the European Forum for Victim-Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice.

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The need to look for alternatives does not necessarily derive from the "Machiavellian" state. Within the realm of the formal judicial system such efforts often reflect judicial bodies' inability to react to citizens' increasingly complex needs.

By contrast, as regards mediation in penal matters, these efforts stem from the need of the users of mediation, that is, offenders, victims and mediators, to solve certain problems in a way that is both more humane and responds better to the actual needs of the parties.

The great number of initiatives and their differentiation also raises the question whether civil society uses these initiatives to create a new concrete 'social community'.

If this holds true, the recreation of 'social communities' might contribute to the development of our societies towards differentiating social interaction systems that could give a greater autonomy to both individuals and social groups in conflict settlement in particular.

(adapted from Victim-Offender Mediation – An Alternative, An Addition or Nothing but a Rubbish Bin in Relation to Legal Proceedings?)

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Leading Edge.  Juhani's current research activities include

• Director of a two year Research Programme "Meeting Family Violence in Mediation", for the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health,

• Director of three year Research Programme "Circles of Maladjustements - Criminal Offending and Racist Victimization among Immigrants" for the Research Academy of Finland.

 

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Reach Juhani Iivari at Juhani.Iivari@stakes.fi.

Bibliography