ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the restorative justice (RJ) movement is still a rising movement. Its concept attracts more and more practitioners and academics, as well as politicians (Van Ness 1999b). Moreover, it is clear that this growing interest in restorative justice is not limited to just one country or continent. On the contrary, at the latest United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, held in Vienna from 10 to 17 April 2000, several practitioners, academics and politicians from all continents were gathered to discuss RJ practices and its implementation. RJ seems to have become, especially for juveniles, an important approach for responding to their crimes. However, this evolution towards a possible large-scale implementation of RJ as the (basic) model of response to juvenile crime also evokes some necessary concerns. After all, as some RJ pioneers have already noticed, the acknowledged informality and the lack of rules in RJ might easily lead to practices which fail to respect some fundamental basic human rights, or to non-RJ practices masquerading as RJ (Braithwaite 2000: 2). Such practices, especially when implemented on a large scale, might impose a real threat to the credibility of the whole RJ movement (Walgrave and Bazemore 1999: 371). Consequently, the question arises whether the call for informality within the RJ movement should not be tempered by the need for clear standards and procedural safeguards, especially with respect to juveniles. In this chapter, in the first part, we discuss five reasons why RJ is, in our opinion, in need of procedural safeguards and standards. In the second part we try to analyse some safeguards and standards that could guide RJ.
