The most important goal of restorative justice is to restore damaged relationship between victim and offender, when offender compensates damage for a victim, apologizes, and victim has an opportunity to be heard, to express emotions incurred during a crime. Hereby, the preconditions for reconciliation between victim and offender are created.

Restorative justice focuses on crime victims' legitimate interests and needs, seeking to create a safe environment by resolving occurred conflicts. Assessing incurred costs and gained benefits it has been proved that costs of criminal justice system could be reduced by applying restorative justice models.

In the European Union there is no country which has not applied some individual models of restorative justice in criminal cases, except for Lithuania. In most European countries, mostly applied model of restorative justice is mediation - intermediation seeking the reconciliation between victim and offender.

The goal of project “Restorative Justice Perspectives in Lithuania” is to create a comprehensive scientific basis and preconditions for implementation of mediation in Lithuania.

Objectives of the project:
1. To define the concept and grounds of restorative justice and to form the scientific background for creation of restorative justice system in Lithuania.

2. To analyze the situation in Lithuania: applicable criminal justice models, existing elements of restorative justice, assumptions and interferences in the development of restorative justice ideas.

3. To identify and investigate the problematic fields of victim and offender mediation, focusing on the principles of mediation, stages of mediation process, criminal offenses, where may be applied mediation, the role of mediator in mediation process, legal significance and procedural form of mediation, some specific categories of mediation.

4. To formulate proposals oriented to legislation and law application, which will enable to apply and successfully use the institute of mediation in Lithuania.

Duration: 2013.03.01 – 2014.12.31.

Researchers: Ilona Michailovič, Algimantas Čepas, Skirmantas Bikelis, Margarita Dobrynina, Rimantas Simaitis, Laura Ūselė, Judita Žukauskaitė, Darius Šneideris.

Project is financed from the Research Council of Lithuania funds. Agreement No. MIP-016/2013.