Restorative Justice in prison – Research in Croatia
By Anna-Maria Getoš and Mladen Knežević
Most restorative programs take place outside prison. There are several reasons for that, more or less well grounded. But, in the recent time, appeared to be equally well-founded a number of reasons for the implementation of projects of restorative justice within the prison walls. Our project will be carried out in semi-open and one closed prison. It will be formed by two groups of prisoners of 20 members each. The group will include only prisoners who committed offenses against property. Groups will be guided by two experienced social workers; they will change the roles in a group. In one group will be the leader and in the other she will take a position of observer. The role of the observer will be to accurately record the answers to the questions of the participants. A qualitative methodology is planned to be used for the analysis.
, (PhD), is Assistant Professor at the Chair for Criminal Law of Zagreb University’s Faculty of law, where she teaches courses in criminology and victimology with criminal law basics since 2005. She is the Head of the ‘Max Planck Partner Group for Balkan Criminology’ established at her Faculty in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg. She studied in Zagreb and at the Freiburg University’s Faculty of Law, where she acquired her LL.M. (2004) and her Dr. jur. (2010). Fields of research interest and expertise include: general criminology and victimology, Croatian criminological history, phenomenology of (political) violence and organised crime (in the Balkans), ‘criminal law & criminology under one roof’, fear of crime & punitivity, crime statistics, restorative justice, and process analysis of criminal law creation & (d)evolution, ISRD3 etc. Author of 3 books, 8 book chapters, co-author of one book and of more than 10 journal articles. Further information: www.mpicc.de/ww/de/pub/partnergruppe.htm; e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Mladen Knežević is Full Professor at Zagreb University Faculty of Law, Social Work Department. His background is social work and sociology. His research field is theories of social work, problems of methodology in social research. He teaches theory of social work and social work in penal institutions. He was particularly interested in the use of systems theory in the analysis of penal institutions.
