In October 1997 the former Central Office for Juvenile Justice, upon the favourable opinion given by the competent Juvenile judges, established to set up a Mediation Office in Catanzaro with the Calabria Juvenile Justice Centre (JJC) as an experiment within the juvenile criminal system. The Mediation Office was the result of an agreement among the Catanzaro JJC, the Department for Municipal and Regional Social Works and the district juvenile magistracy. In compliance with the provisions established in the Code of Juvenile Criminal Procedure (Presidential Decree No. 448/1988) the above agreement acknowledged and supported the mediation pilot scheme which had been worked out on the basis of ongoing nationwide experiences by an interdisciplinary team made up of practitioners singled out among civil servants as well as voluntary workers and third sector: psychologists, educators, case-workers and sociologists, all selected because of their previous experience within juvenile justice.
During the initial testing period the working group experienced mediation along with probation. In the course of time more and more social actors joined juvenile penal mediation and concurred to divulge it in Calabria.
From 1996 through 2001 the Mediation Office processed 174 cases, 118 of which had a positive outcome, 37 a negative result, while mediation turned out impossible for the remaining 19 cases.
A significant step forward took place in September 2002, which marks the institutional endorsement of the initiative under way: the President of the Calabria Region and the Director of the Calabria and Basilicata JJC entered in a protocol agreement to set up a Juvenile Penal Mediation Office. The agreement (passed by the Regional Council and published on the Calabria Official Journal [BURC] of October 12, 2003) is part of a more extensive scheme, supported by the Regional Administration, to launch the Social Mediation Centre concerning four specific branches: family mediation, (adult) penal mediation, juvenile penal mediation and cultural mediation. The staff of the Mediation Centre consists of 2 representatives of the Calabria Region (Department for Social Services), 2 representatives of JJC, 3 third sector workers and 2 voluntary workers. The place where juvenile penal mediation and family mediation activities can be unfolded is non-institutional: a "modern" office (located on 326, Viale de Filippis) far away from court and welfare offices. After a preliminary stage it managed to guarantee a better scientific and professional approach, operating a network connection with local services and other mediation and study centres that were set up all over the country and help provide information and statistics to the Direction General for the Enforcement of Judicial Orders of the Juvenile Justice Department (JJD) to go deeper into the subject.
258 cases of juvenile penal mediation were dealt with between 2002 and 2005 where 352 juveniles were indicted:.
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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