Widening the Use of Mediation in the Domestic Criminal Justice System

Abstract

In Hun­gary, crim­inal me­di­ation is avail­able for crimes against per­sons, prop­erty and traffic of­fences. The legal re­quire­ment is, on the one hand, that the per­pet­rator ad-mits to the crime and, on the other hand, that the per­pet­rator com­pensates for the dam­age caused, pun­ish­able by im­pris­on­ment of up to three years, within the frame­work of the me­di­ation pro­ced­ure. If the above con­junct­ive con­di­tions are met, the of­fender is not pun­ish­able. The legal reg­u­la­tion of the me­di­ation pro­ced­ure in Hun­gary has un­der­gone changes in the last few years which jus­tify the con­clu­sion that the ex­ten­sion of the me­di­ation pro­ced­ure is a le­git­im­ate le­gis­lat­ive ob­ject­ive in Hun­gary. This is evid­enced by the fact that crim­inal me­di­ation can be used even if the of­fence in ques­tion is not pun­ish­able by law with a prison sen­tence of more than five years. In this case, the sen­tence may be re­duced without limit. However, under the cur­rent na­tional le­gis­la­tion, crim­inal me­di­ation is ex­cluded if the of­fender is a re­peat of­fender, and it is not avail­able if the of­fender is serving a cus­todial sen­tence with a final court de­cision. Me­di­ation is there­fore still a lim­ited in­sti­tu­tion, des­pite the con­tinu­ous de­mand for its ex­pan­sion, and its pos­it­ive be­ne­fits, such as the joint pro­cessing of trauma ex­per­i­enced by the vic­tim and the of­fender, the pos­sib­il­ity of re­par­a­tion, or the pro­mo­tion of so­cial bond­ing, are not fully in­teg­rated into the re-in­teg­ra­tion policy of pris­ons. In­stead, pris­ons use the so-called main­stream re­in­teg­ra­tion tools, with par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to edu­ca­tion and forms of em­ploy­ment.