Restorative justice focuses on doing justice after the occurrence of an offence. It gives priority to deliberative encounters as the best way of achieving restoration. The ambition of the maximalist option of restorative justice is to modify the punitive apriorism in criminal justice into a restorative apriorism. One of the challenges is to unravel the socio-ethical and political intuitions that orient the option for restorative justice. Restorative justice is first of all an option based on socio-ethical considerations: aiming at restoration instead of accepting the punitive premise, and giving full space for deliberation processes among stakeholders instead of imposing a top down decision procedure. These social ethical grounds of restorative justice have a potential contribution to improving the quality of our democracies.

This article gives a complete and detailed overview of research evaluations and outcomes of restorative justice projects in the Netherlands over the past decades. It involves developments where clearly restorative justice inspiration was visible. The author describes restorative practices with juveniles and the so-called project ‘Herstelbemiddeling’ (restorative mediation) that started in the nineties. Most evaluations had positive outcomes, but nevertheless there was no continuation from the political side. The author also examines the introduction of the country wide ‘victim-offender conversations’ which are carried out by the national victim support organization. Although this choice is justified because of the vulnerability of some victims and the chance of revictimisation, the author questions if victim organizations can really - in the best interests of the victims – turn away from problems related to the (hardened) treatment of offenders. Victim-offender conversations are to be respected and to be continued, but they cannot be seen as a restorative justice practice.

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In this article, the author evaluates whether the development of restorative justice in Belgium over the past ten years offers an opportunity to ‘celebrate’, as the Journal for Restorative Justice does. Developments in practice show that mediation is available at all stages of the judicial procedure for adult offenders and mediation and conferencing are available according to youth law. Research has been carried out on various topics, covering a variety of practices. Furthermore, it has elaborated the concept of restorative justice, inspired innovative practices and influenced policy-making. Belgium seems to be peculiar in the relation between practice, research and policy, which tend to influence one another. Compared to the Netherlands, Belgium does have more reasons to celebrate the development of restorative justice.

Hans Boutellier is giving a panoramic overview of important changes in society. As worked out in his recent book De improvisatiemaatschappij (The improvisation society) he describes that society has evaluated into a network society in which social ordering is primarily a matter of self-organizing mechanisms. The aim for self-ordering would be a possibility for a further growth of restorative practices, but at the same time we are dealing with a penal-populist culture. In that culture citizenship, dialogue and self-ordering are suspect and – paradoxically – safety is expected to be delivered only by the state.

This contribution aims to understand the right things when doing justice. Restorative justice is an approach to crime that, properly pursued, focuses not merely on the lawbreaking behaviour of the offender but also on the effect of that behaviour on victims and communities. Restorative justice seeks accountability on the part of offenders in such a way that the harm done can be addressed and repaired to the extent possible. Restorative justice allows the parties to a crime to participate directly and voluntarily in considering the harm and fashioning a resolution that addresses that harm. It is also important that the right thing about restorative justice and about democracy be understood. Crucial is respectful dialogue during which people who disagree listen to one another, speak from the heart and mind, identify common values, recognize the importance of the others, and work toward a common solution.

The Belgian Customs Administration has taken the lead on the federal level to elaborate an anti-corruption policy. Up till now the initiatives of the administration D&A consisted of: anti-corruption training for the complete staff, a distribution of the relevant regulation concerning corruption and the setting up of an internal complaints desk. These measures suggest that mainly the individual employee has to take responsibility to prevent corruption. Based on three related research stages we conclude that the social-economic context and the organisational characteristics also contribute to the explanation of corruption which implies to go beyond the micro-level when developing an anti-corruption policy. The structure of our analysis is based on the five key variables of Gobert and Punch: the social, economic and cultural characteristics, the nature and structure of the organisation, rationality, neutralisation techniques and moral disengagement and crime facilitative characteristics. This contribution is the first section of a research project on the responsibilities of the public sector and the private companies for public corruption.

There is a large – and still growing – body of criminological literature on the relationship between crime and work. However, the exact nature of that relationship often remains diffuse. In this article we explored the relationships between organized crime and work. Based on analysis of the forty most recent cases of the Organized Crime Monitor we distinguished between two types of relations connecting organized crime and work. First, crimes can be based in the occupation of the offender when the occupation provides concrete opportunities to offend or facilitates the crimes of others. Secondly, the occupation of the offender can also be used as a shield concealing the illegal behavior or identity of the offender.

Employment and crime are commonly assumed to be negatively correlated. Those employed are less likely to commit crimes, and conversely, those who have a criminal record are less likely to become employed. Criminological research has provided strong empirical and theoretical support for the link between employment and crime, but also suggests that a complex set of mechanisms may be at play. Additionally, studies show that employment can also increase the risk of criminal behaviour. In the introduction of this special issue, three causal relationships in the work-crime nexus will be discussed: employment causing crime, employment preventing crime, and crime blocking future employment.

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