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Volume 9, Issue 2      A Publication of the Victim-Offender Mediation Association      Spring 1998

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN RUSSIA

By Eric Ian Shank, M.A.

THIS ISSUE OF THE VOMA QUARTERLY PRESENTS A TRIO OF INTERNATIONAL ARTICLES THAT DEMONSTRATE THE VARIED AND ENTHUSIASTIC APPROACHES WITHIN VOMA AND

Eric Ian Shank, M.A., is a graduate student of Dispute Resolution at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  This past summer, he worked at the Moscow Center for Prison Reform in Russia, and was fortunate to have had the opportunity to share some Western approaches to restorative justice--including victim-offender mediation-- at a conference on alternative sanctions at the Sakharov Center, and at a seminar sponsored by Friends House Moscow. This article offers a brief synthesis of the lessons learned from the experience, and examines some of the challenges faced in trying to implement Western-style mediation within the context of the Russian criminal justice system.

The collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the decade, long anticipated by the West, has had unfortunate consequences for the Russian people.  The social and economic institutions which supported the population for seventy years disappeared virtually overnight, leaving the Russians to fend for themselves amidst a torrent of reckless foreign and domestic speculation.  The recent spread of Russian organized crime has been well-publicized abroad, and endlessly dramatized by Hollywood; what is less well-known, however, is that everyday living conditions have become much more unstable in Russia since the demise of the USSR, and have resulted in a crisis on many levels. 

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