(De)Judicializing Gender Violence? Hybrid Regulation in Juvenile Victim-Offender Mediation

Regulating gender violence is one of the major contemporary challenges for justice systems. On one hand, social movements denounce the structural dimension of this violence presented as the result of patriarchy (Cavalin et al. 2022) ; on the other hand, scientific literature highlights the ineffectiveness of criminal justice in identifying gender violence, condemning offenders, and protecting victims (Koss et al. 2003; Lieber 2023).

Responses take two different directions: on one hand, reforming criminal law to make it more "effective," as evidenced by the recent revision of sexual criminal law in Switzerland; on the other hand, inventing new ways of "doing justice" by relying on so-called alternative justice models, such as mediation and restorative justice. Both types of responses are subject to controversies (Cossins 2008; Casas Vila 2016; Burns et Sinko 2023), which denounce in the former case a "carceral feminism" and point out in the latter case the risks of secondary victimization.

This paper aims to critically interrogate an alternative response to gender violence among juveniles in Switzerland: how is the use of victim-offender mediation justified by the courts? How are categories such as "violence," "offender," "victim," or "justice" employed? How does this contribute to (re)distributing agency, responsibility, and vulnerability in gender violence situations? to what extent is the “social problem” of gender violence (de)judicialized by these alternative forms of justice?

This paper is based on 18 months qualitative research conducted in Switzerland among mediators and juvenile judges, from a perspective of analyzing law in action. I conceptualized these alternative justice mechanisms as hybrid systems, operating at the fringes of the judicial power (Daly 2002; Zernova 2007), and relying on plural and competing norms from legal realms as well as from psychology or social work (Tränkle 2007).