The adoption of restorative justice ideas as an example for cursory affairs in the legal sociology: Case of Serbia

Abstract

The modern agenda of restorative justice has arisen as a critique against the retributive criminal justice. The restorative-justice-movement offers valuable ideas, which can be adopted, rethought and incorporated in any self-aware criminal justice system. Therefore, the fact that there is a raising awareness in many countries for different victim rights and restorative programmes does not by necessity mean that all claims of the restorative-justice-movement are to be accepted and baptized in the near or far future. However, the case of Serbia shows that for some countries the restorative-justice-movement may represent a serious danger: very modern and advanced institutions of criminal justice may be disregarded, while misinterpreted as a barrier to introduction and existence of restorative justice. The purpose of punishment in Serbian criminal law has traditionally been the crime prevention. Therefore the goal of restorative justice advocates in Serbia must not be to plainly transplant the arguments, such as the one that the 'traditional' criminal justice system must be and eventually will be replaced with a restorative one. Differently than in many other countries, the 'traditional' criminal justice system in Serbia is not the retributive but the preventive one, and therefore compatible with basic restorative justice ideas.