Samenvatting

The author reports on the doctorate research that she presented in 2009. Restorative practices have not often been researched as a praxis of social work, on the interface between giving help and administering justice. The author situates restorative mediation as a form of social work on the threshold between the private and the public, a threshold that she considers to be of a social nature.Restorative mediation as social work should contribute to values such as human dignity and social justice. The author observed and studied restorative mediation in adult on the one hand and juvenile criminal cases on the other (in Flanders, Belgium) and found that these practices differ widely.Although in both kind of practices responsibility and restoration are central concepts, their meanings differ fundamentally: in youth cases the offer of restorative mediation departs from a critical pedagogy oriented at emancipation, holding on to protective arrangements at the same time. Societal developments changed the image of youngsters from victims of society into risks for society and this may have implied that social problems around criminality are now also by mediation transformed into individual problems for which juveniles should be held accountable.In adult criminal cases the approach was initially much more on civic responsibility for the harm done to victims and since mediation was only offered in serious cases the courts always had their say too.Reflecting upon her research the author questions whether dominant social norms can be and still are challenged in the praxis of mediation. Restorative mediation has become incorporated into the existing institutional arrangements relevant to juveniles and adults: with juvenile cases the logic of prevention seems to become dominant. The practices seem to become exercises in taking responsibility within the traditional normative framework. On the threshold between the private and the public restorative practices, with their self-image of being a more humane form of law enforcement, run the risk of becoming blind for the potential effect of criminalization of their clients.