ABSTRACT
Restorative justice is not new (Weitekamp, 1999). Though the term gained popularity in most of the western world only in the past decade (Shaw and Jane, 1998; Van Ness and Strong, 2001; Bazemore and Schiff, 2001), restorative decision-making in the form of victim–offender mediation programs has a 30-year history in the United States. This history began in 1972 with an experimental program in the Minnesota Department of Corrections using victim–offender meetings as a component of a restitution program designed for adult inmates eligible for early release (Hudson and Galaway, 1990; Hudson, personal communication, 2001). By the early 1980s, a number of community-based victim–offender mediation programs had taken hold primarily in juvenile courts and non-profit agencies. By the late 1990s, some 300 such programs had been identified (Umbreit et al., 2003).
