OBLIGATION TO COMPENSATE THE LOSS IN PROCEEDINGS INVOLVING JUVENILE OFFENDERS

The increasing interest in the model o f restorative justice finds its expression in the need to introduce a judiciary paradigm that would be an alternative to retributive justice. This model serves as a complementation o f the traditional system and includes solutions catering for loss compensation, mediation and disturbed law restitution with active participation of the offender and the victim. This new developmental tendency encourages deliberations on the implementation o f the idea of restorative justice in the Polish model of proceedings in juvenile delinquency matters and compensation instruments included in it. Among others, those instruments consist of an obligation put on a juvenile delinquent to compensate the loss, to perform a particular work or to provide services for the victim or the local community; all used as an educational means or a condition upon which a release on probation is granted. Pronouncing such punishment is determined by the circumstances calling for the use of educational means and the Family Division refers to them when a juvenile offender demonstrates signs of moral decay or has committed a punishable offence. Deliberations on the subject of remedies which at least partially satisfy victim’s claims are related to the problem o f the regulations of the scope of victim’s rights included in the Juveniles Proceedings Act