Victim/Offender Mediation in Turkey
After a delegation of members of the Turkish Parliament visited Marquette Law School last month, I had the privilege of traveling to Istanbul to moderate a victim/offender mediation conference for two hundred fifty Turkish prosecutors and judges. There were fourteen of us restorative justice “experts” from ten different countries who were there for three days to talk to the ballroom full of lawyers, who wanted to learn how to best implement Turkey’s already enacted victim/offender mediation process during criminal prosecutions. It was a fabulous experience.
The United Nations’ Development Programs for Judicial Reform organized and oversaw the planning of the conference. Because the panel members came from many countries (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Scotland, Spain, Turkey, and the United States), we had simultaneous translations of the conference into several languages. The Turkish audience was lively and eager to participate in the dialogue. Over the first two days we spent much of our time taking questions from the floor and answering them from the perspectives of different cultures, judicial systems and philosophies. The Turkish prosecutors and judges, like prosecutors and judges around the world, are working to improve the delivery of justice despite their significant caseloads. They hope that by using restorative processes that they can provide a more just system while reducing the number of cases that must go to trial.
I have a number of observations about the conference.