Mediation in the Criminal Proceedings

Mediation is a voluntary way of resolving conflicts amicably with the aid of a third party as mediator specialized in conditions of neutrality, impartiality and confidentiality. Mediation is based on the trust the parties award to the mediator as a person able to facilitate negotiations between them and support them to resolve the conflict by obtaining a solution mutually convenient, efficient and sustainable. Conflicts appear from the unlawful conduct of individuals when they don’t do what the rule of conduct orders, when they do something different, incompatible with the rule of conduct or when they react otherwise than as prescribed by rule of conduct. Legal illicit takes different forms depending on the legal rules of conduct rule violations such as civil illegality, trade illicit, administrative illicit, financial illicit, crime etc. In terms of our approach, of all these forms of illicit, we are interested in the crime which poses the most serious form of illegality legal because it disturbs essentially the law, the public peace, irreparable damage, public and social evil. For this purpose the legislature intended expressly to provide the crime in each state’s criminal law and in special provisions in the Law Courts. Mediation is likely primarily to relieve our Courts to resolve a significant number of cases. This process of mediation as a preliminary procedure is mandatory in some European countries, unlike Romania where neither person injured nor the perpetrator are not forced to accept the mediation procedure even not as the prior procedure. One of the big 'bugs' of processes including criminal processes in our country is the slowing of these processes, even if the European regulations stipulate their resolution in a reasonable time. It is discussed whether the 'confrontation' between the principles of speed and finding out the truth would be detrimental to the primacy of the other. That is why individuals and mediators expressly require that the new Code of Criminal Procedure and the draft amendment of Law 192/2006 to provide that judges advise the parties to mediation before trial.