The role of penal mediation In achieving restorative justice

Despite all the efforts made by the state as it has the right to impose punishment and fight crime, the phenomenon of crime is constantly increasing, in addition to the increase and accumulation of cases related to it before the penal judicial authorities, which has led to the emergence of a stifling crisis known as “the criminal justice crisis” due to excessive asylum to criminalization and focus on punitive policy, which called for searching for alternatives to public action as a means of rationalizing criminal policy and moving towards a new concept of justice from punitive deterrent justice to consensual restorative justice to resolve disputes. Perhaps penal mediation is the alternative that responds to these requirements, as it is considered one of the new mechanisms for resolving penal disputes, which was approved by the Algerian legislator under Ordinance 15-02 amending and supplementing the Code of Penal Procedure as a legal system in response to the need to adopt a contemporary criminal policy based on reconciliation between members of society and promoting social peace. Accordingly, the problem posed in this research is as follows: How did the legislator organize the mediation system in penal matters? How effective is this mechanism in achieving restorative justice?