Not wishing to examine in detail the historical process leading to the discovery of a preliminary idea of reparative justice, we can state that generally speaking modern reparative culture finds its roots in the 1970s.
The traditionally accepted date is 1974, with reference to the first author-victim reconciliation programme, which was experimented in Canada, Ontario, and is generally known as case "0". A Probation office official, who had been asked to find a suitable punishment for two persons accused of damaging 22 people, had the idea of organizing a meeting between authors and victims. The aim was the promotion of a negotiation for the compensation of the damage and possibly a pacific solution of the controversy. The request was accepted by the judge. The authors, accompanied by social workers, met each one of the victims informally and individually. An agreement was found and the reparation carried out.
From that moment similar programmes have spread to the whole of North America and later on to Europe. However we must not believe that the European reparative paradigm is a simple reproduction of the North-American one. Europe has developed projects and plans in the field of reconciliatory and reparative justice, in a completely autonomous way, although not always with linear systems.
Since the 1980s, some countries such as Austria, England, Finland and Norway have played a fundamental part in the diffusion of the analysed model, that quickly found an application in nearly all European countries, obviously following different patterns according to the individual legal and political traditions and to the different relationship between civil society and the State.
end of main content section.
Tools in Network is a project of the Department of Juvenile Justice - Ministry of Justice of Italy in the framework of the Leonardo Da Vinci Education and Culture Lifelong Programme