Reconciliation Discourses and Problems of Institutionalization of Reconciliation Procedures in Criminal Cases

Abstract

The global trend of development of new approaches in criminal proceedings, as well as the emerging domestic practice of restorative justice in the last two decades set objective prerequisites for the institutionalisation of conciliation procedures in criminal cases in Russian law. However, attempts to legislate them have not yet been successful. The author considers the clash of socio-cultural discourses as a key factor of resistance to innovation. The article analyses the difference between the understanding of reconciliation in the concept of restorative justice and the dominant legal discourse on reconciliation in criminal cases, and considers the main ideas of the draft laws developed by the initiative working group of the Public Centre for Judicial and Legal Reform in 2020 and 2021. It is shown that interpreting the characteristics of restorative justice in terms of unproblematised legal axioms contradicts the proposed initiatives. The identification of the discursive grounds behind the different positions, against the background of increasing recognition of the role of reconciliation procedures, is a prerequisite for improving the conceptual system that corresponds to the objectives of modern humanistic criminal justice.