Dr. Christa Pelikan, a sociologist of law, has worked as a researcher at the  Institute for the Sociology of Law and Criminology in Vienna since its foundation in 1973.  In 1984, Christa did accompanying research in a pilot project that introduced victim-offender mediation (VOM) in the juvenile courts of Austria. She developed a specific approach for this kind of research by combining elements of action research and evaluation research.   

Since the 1990s, Christa has reported at meetings and conferences throughout Europe on the overwhelming success of the Austrian pilot projects.  Their implementation resulted in statutory provisions for VOM:

• the Juvenile Justice Act 1988
  

• the general Criminal Procedural Code  in 2000

Christa has chaired the Committee of Experts on Mediation in Penal Matters set up by  the Council of Europe’s European Committee on Crime Problems .  The committee produced principles for developing mediation in penal matters known as “Recommendation No R (99) 19”, which was later recommended to member states by the Committee of Ministers.  This has led to wider acceptance, adoption and implementation of VOM in Europe.

This Recommendation influenced the UN Draft Declaration of Basic Principles on the Use of Restorative Justice in Criminal Matters by way of cooperation between the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts and the NGOs preparing the draft. In October 2001, Christa joined with other experts at a meeting in Ottawa that produced a revised version of the Declaration of Basic Principles.

Christa is a member of the board of the European Forum for Victim Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice. She hopes to use her position to further promote and support working practices of restorative justice, especially in the Middle and Eastern European countries.  

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Restorative Justice is something very ordinary that has become extraordinary.

During my research I was quite surprised at the way victims reacted to the offer of VOM:

"Yes, of course, to go and talk about what has happened and to try to arrange for meaningful compensation is a good way of dealing with what has happened – at least in my case!"

But this kind of reaction has become increasingly superseded by the hegemonic thinking in categories of punishment.  Where this happens, people forget that there exists this ordinary and sensible way of dealing with 'the consequences of crime'.

Restorative justice practices are  there to keep alive our memory and our common sense.   

-Christa Pelikan

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Leading Edge.  Christa Pelikan envisions two main goals ahead:

Of immediate importance is the critical task inside the European Forum:  to “make an inroad for restorative justice without having it lose its bite and become just another name for a bunch of rehabilitative measures or a mere tinsel or adornment to the criminal justice system.”  

She will also attempt to make a contribution to the theory of restorative justice by

• drawing on the work of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann and his theories of the function and the achievements (and the paradoxes) of law;

• drawing on the thinking of political philosopher Hannah Arendt that provides links to the Republican theory of criminal justice

• integrating the ideas of the philosopher and psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin found in her concept of recognition and its relation to Hegel's theory of power and domination.

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Reach Christa Pelikan at christa.pelikan@irks.at

Bibliography