The Victim-Offender Mediation (VOM) and Some Recent Initiatives by Police and Local Government Department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Fasihuddin

Abstract
With the rising desire of managing crimes and delinquencies through community efforts, a number of programmes and initiatives are launched by the police throughout the world. Reasons for this desire and change are many. This desire looks like a paradigm shift in the
current literature on policing and criminology. In places where the police are under-staffed,
ill-equipped, poorly-paid and poorly trained, and are faced with serious organized crimes
like terrorism, the desire to get more and more public support and share the workload and
responsibility with others increases manifold. Pakistani police is being faced with such situation, especially in the settled districts of Khyber Pakhunkhwa (KPK). The KPK police
and Local Government initiated two different programmes of mediation, conciliation and
local consultative bodies for solving petty problems of the local community, while the police
of KPK and Local Government officials in the leading role. This paper examines the concept
of this desire and the outcome of these various initiatives. Despite innovations and a Westren
outlook, the initiatives found a soft field in the socio-religious context of KPK.

Keywords: Victim-Offender Mediation (VOM), Conciliatory Committee, Musalihat Anjuman,
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), UNDP, Police, Khyebr Pakhtunkhwa, (KP), Local
Government.