Informal Settlement of Criminal Conflicts without Police Intervention

Today the restorative justice practices to settlement of disputes arising from crime and victimization compensation has been accepted in many communities. Recent studies have shown that patterns of simple and rehabilitative justice in control, crime prevention and criminal behavior reformation are not enough and restorative and community-based justice models should also be employed. The main question is: what is the role of article regulation in informal dispute settlement, and in this way, how has it maintained its dependency with the formal justice? This article referring to the sociocultural characteristics of the Arabs of Khuzestan, investigates the position of "peacemaking ceremony" as one of the traditional methods of settlement of disputes on the basis of restorative justice in the cultural context of the Arabs of Khuzestan.

The present study is of a qualitative research type in which observation, interview, and documentary methods have been employed. The observations and interviews were run with sheikhs, chiefs, elders, informants, educated and tribes in Shadegan, Ahwaz, and Susangerd. In the documentary method, the contents and the information contained in books, magazines and other sources were used.

Findings and results:

The findings of this study are as follows: 1) Arabs in Khuzestan has a great capacity to settlement of their conflicts traditionally; among them, the Arab tribes often prefer to end their disagreements through peacemaking ceremony. 2) Restorative justice practices such as peacemaking ceremony lead to the settlement of crimes which remain unresolved via formal criminal justice. However, there is still dependency between the patterns of restorative justice and formal criminal justice. 3) Methods of settlement of conflicts, especially peacemaking ceremony among the Arabs of Khuzestan are a function of restorative justice approach. This means that they are not used all crimes. 4) The role of women as a means of transit or trade has been mainly replaced with payments (money) in peacemaking ceremony.