ABSTRACT
This chapter considers and contrasts the comparative developments and practices of victim-offender mediation and reparation, and the nature of their appeals, in both France and England and Wales. It aims to identify some of the conceptual tools for comparative criminological and socio-legal research through the examination of what, at face value, may seem like similar developments in practice. The chapter examines how culturally sensitive understanding of 'community' helps highlight differences in the operationalization of mediation in France and England. At a discursive level victim-offender mediation directly connects crime and culture by way of two relatively autonomous appeals around which a host of normative and moral, as well as administrative and managerial, concerns coalesce. The restorative priorities of mediation identify the importance of ongoing and future relations – the mainstay of 'community'. The legitimacy of mediation schemes derives not from their moral attachment to 'community' but from the authority that stems from their attachment to the formal criminal justice system.
