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The Social reintegration of offenders is one of the most critical objectives of criminal justice system. To achieve this
objective different approaches are practiced in different countries. According to the UN office of drugs and crimes
there are three approaches prison based rehabilitation and reformation programs, aftercare reintegration programs
(community intervention) and non custodial measures. Among non-custodial measures alternative dispute resolution
mechanisms are accepted as a best mechanism for offenders in western countries and historical dispute resolution
mechanism in African states. In the contemporary world a new paradigm of criminal justice system called
restorative justice system is accepted as the best mechanism for offender reintegration. In this new paradigm all
stakeholders are participate to solve the dispute and redress the harm on the crime victim and reintegrate the
offenders through healing ceremonies of customary dispute resolution mechanisms. Under the Ethiopian criminal
justice system informal dispute resolution mechanisms applied in parallel to formal criminal justice system in
remote area and used to reintegrate the offender by reconciliation of disputing parties through customary rituals.
Customary dispute resolution mechanisms also used to restore the previous relationship and maintain a future
peaceful relationship between the conflicting parties and the communities by preventing a culture of revenge and
recidivism by reintegrating the offender into the community. But, this customarily accepted peaceful dispute
resolution mechanism not recognized in the formal criminal justice system .This thesis examines the place of social
reintegration programs under the Ethiopian criminal justice system and the compatibility of customary dispute
resolution mechanisms for the reintegration of offenders by comparing and contrasting the formal criminal justice
system with the informal criminal justice system based on the practice in the study area, concepts in the literatures
and trends in other countries. The study used interview, legislative analysis and relevant literature analysis. The
finding shows the Ethiopian criminal justice system focuses only in punishing the offender and Crime preventing
and reintegrating non-custodial measures like customary dispute resolution mechanisms used to reintegrate the
offenders are not recognized clearly. Although the criminal law and criminal procedure code incorporate some
concepts about reintegration of offenders such as parole, probation and private prosecution, there is no established
and effective organs for supervising and assist the parole and probation in Ethiopia according to the criminal code
.Therefore , the study shows recognition of non-custodial measures used to reintegrate the offender in some selected
crimes based on future studie |
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