Victim‐offender mediation: Lessons from the Japanese experience

In emphasizing offender correction and restoration to the community, law enforcement authorities in Japan have learned that encouraging confession, remorse, victim compensation, and victim pardon is essential to correcting socially deviant behavior. U.S. experience with victim‐offender mediation in the context of a broad program of commonly based reintegrative efforts suggests that the Japanese approach is at least partly transferable. Thus, anywhere victim‐offender mediation is to become more than a victim assistance program, its expansion in concert with other reintegrative, community‐based programs should be a high priority.