La mediación penal como programa de justicia restaurativa en el procedimiento penal colombiano

Abstract

Law 906 of 2004, current Colombian Code of Criminal Procedure, included in its Book VI the one related to the restorative justice and indicated, in art. 521, that its mechanisms are the pre-procedural conciliation, the conciliation in the integral reparation incident and the mediation. This study focuses on the latter, since, although the criminal procedural statute ordered the Attorney General’s Office to issue a manual to develop it, ten years after the entry into force of the rule, this task has not been fully implemented . Section twelve of the Manual of Procedures of the Prosecutor’s Office(2006), although approaching it, does not include all the elements required by art. 527 of Law 906 of 2004. In practice, the use of mediation is scarce by the actors of the system, which limits the application of restorative justice in criminal matters in Colombia. This article exposes the principles of restorative justice, the procedural elements of criminal mediation pointed out by the legislator and, in the same, some proposals are made concerning the training of mediators in the Colombian criminal procedure; In this order of departure, sheds light on how this type of justice in criminal matters can be effectively developed.