Pabsdorff, Rytterbro, Sambou & Uotila on Victim-Offender Mediation

Mari-Louise Pabsdorff (pictured), Lise-Lotte Rytterbro , Saija Sambou and Erika Uotila (University of Oslo - Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law , Stockholm University , affiliation not provided to SSRN and affiliation not provided to SSRN) have posted Victim-Offender Mediation: Observations from Scandinavia (Oñati Socio-Legal Series, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2011) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The focus of this article is the discourse between parties and mediator(s) in Victim-Offender Mediation in Scandinavia. The analysis show that mediation talk is concentrated on what happened in the actual crime situation, and what the parties and other persons present at the time did or did not do. Different "accounts" are used actively by the parties, to excuse or justify their behaviour. The explanations for crime are thus primarily found on an individual level, leaving societal issues out. A normative and evaluative inquiry of crimes and why crimes occur plays a minimal (if any) role in VOM in Scandinavia.