With the Politionele Acties, between 1945 and 1949, coloniser The Netherlands tried to restore order in the Dutch East Indies. Over 100,000 soldiers embarked. Over 2,500 resisted and were tried to prison sentences of two months to five years. They should be rehabilitated, writes Theo de Roos, who is concerned about how the Dutch government takes its responsibility.

An initial exploration of several criminal law modalities based on which forensic care can be imposed and provided reveals there is still a long way to go in embedding restorative justice in forensic care. Commitment to restorative justice provisions and restorative justice as a sanction goal does not have the highest priority. For various reasons, forensic patients are not automatically eligible for restorative justice activities.
The conclusion can be drawn that the ‘combination’ of restorative justice and forensic care is a field still in development. The path to restorative activities and trajectories often lacks a clear starting point and the route on the criminal law map is not yet clearly defined. The fact that restorative justice can be meaningful for both victim and offender and may contribute to receptivity to forensic treatment is in itself a reason to invest in it.

This contribution focuses on tensions between the police and young people with a migration background. In particular young people of the second generation have a lot of distrust towards the police, partly because of (perceived) discrimination. The authors provide an overview of mainly foreign projects which aimed to achieve an improved relationship through dialogue. In the second part they present some preliminary results from a number of pilots in Brussels and Antwerp in which they have been involved in recent years. They map out how participation in such projects is experienced by the participants and how they view restoration.

Nils Christie’s property perspective champions the active participation of the perpetrator and the victim in handling their conflict. Respect for the property claims of the offender and the victim fosters adequate conflict settlement and even paves the way for forgiveness. Christie, however, did not substantiate the notion of property. He did not clarify whether property is a moral concept, whether one can own a conflict, and how one acquires such property. After providing a detailed analysis of the property perspective and investigating its merits and demerits, this contribution shows that this view offers a valuable framework to address the standing to forgive and to elucidate how apologies and amends mitigate the discretional wielding of the power to forgive.

This discussion contribution focuses on the possibilities and limitations of Environmental Restorative Justice. This new branch of restorative justice raises many questions. Should the restorative justice movement focus on combating environmental pollution? Should victim groups engage in dialogue with CEO strategists of large polluting companies? The author points out that we may be more dependent on civil disobedience, for which Extinction Rebellion is a model. That means conflict intensification. Only after a phase of pressure and coercion, a phase of recovery, peace and healing may come into view. In addition, the author explains that bringing together a collective of victims and local populations who have suffered environmental harm opens the way to an alternative format of restorative justice: a public forum for truth-finding and restoration.

This article presents some findings of the pilot Samenspraak. Samenspraak brings offenders, victims/survivors, relatives and citizens into contact with each other. These participants were involved in the same type of crime, but not in the same event. In six separate meetings, the group discusses a traumatic event they have experienced in the context of sexual crimes. Two mediators of Perspectief Herstelbemiddeling guided the group. Afterwards, the experiences of participants have been inventoried by a policy officer and a mediator who were not involved in guiding the group. The results are very promising.

In Spring 2023, the movie Je verrai toujours vos visages was launched in France (English title: ‘All your faces’, Director Jeanne Herry). The movie tells the story of two restorative justice cases: one on victim-offender mediation years after a sexual abuse happened, the other one on a group dialogue between victims and offenders in prison. Both cases are put into scene in a remarkably realistic and authentic way. It reveals in a profound way the process through which all the participants are going during several months, with all their needs, questions, hesitations, anger and other emotions, and how the dialogical process supports their personal evolution. The movie also shows convincingly that restorative justice is not a ‘soft process’ at all, but that participation entails hard work for all. The picture as presented in the movie reflects, to some extent, the practice of restorative justice in countries as Belgium and The Netherlands, be it that the practice at the pre-sentence or sentence level is not being included in the movie. ‘All your faces’ offers an excellent introduction to restorative justice, performed by great and internationally renowned actors.

This book review is about the practically applicable guideline ‘Recovery after a crime’, intended for social workers who work with offenders, by the authors Van Daele and Vanhoeck. The conceptual framework of recovery, the personal stories and associated verbs are discussed. This will be followed by a discussion on the content of the book, and I will also make some additional comments. Finally, I answer the question whether the book is also a must-read for restorative mediators who guide the dialogue between offender and victim.