Restorative justice is a system centered on restorative aspects rather than just punitive ones. Indeed, crime should be redressed, not just punished. It has become progressively more popular over the years and its emergence can be explained by the failures of traditional criminal justice models. The current criminal justice system has more than demonstrated the problems it raises and its inefficiency in a number of issues: “We have never solved the equation of punishment and retribution on the one hand and reform on the other. I seriously doubt we ever will." Therefore it is necessary to find a balance between a rehabilitative system and a punitive system, a system that has both fairness in punishment and effectiveness in stopping recidivism. Restorative justice as a whole is a very broad topic, so we will critically analyze it through one of its restorative practices: victim-offender mediation. Because it focuses on both the victim and the offender and actually involves an interaction between both parties, the analysis of victim-offender mediation is the best way to evaluate the impact of restorative justice as a whole. Victim-offender mediation originated in Ontario, Canada. precisely where in the early 1970s, two young delinquents who had committed acts of vandalism were asked to meet the victims their crime had affected. Following the meetings, the judge decided that the two perpetrators of the crime should compensate the victims. The justification for victim-offender mediation was therefore initially to benefit both the victim and the offender, it is based on the value of conciliation that is missing in the traditional system and was introduced through testing. Mediation can be seen as a progress from... middle of paper......sfactory, they still demonstrate a progress from the punitive system and must be taken into account with the satisfaction and perceived fairness factors which are highly positive. It is certainly too early to know the future of victim-offender mediation and restorative justice as a whole. It may be that victim-offender mediation has had limited success in terms of suppressing (recidivism) crime and has encountered a number of important issues such as resources or participation, but we can certainly learn something from it. Indeed, if it can be argued that mediation is not perfect, nor is the traditional criminal justice system, this means that something must be done and hopefully we can progressively move from a punitive and repressive system towards a more restorative system i whose benefits have been overshadowed. through the experience of victim-offender mediation.