ABSTRACT. Tränkle deals with Victim-Offender Mediation (VOM) in Germany and France, which is a form of Restorative Justice (RJ). Dubber holds that punishment requires a political justification: as the most severe form of state coercion, punishment poses the most serious challenge to the legitimacy of the state. Dünkel and Smit state that in most jurisdictions penal policy makers are aware that they operate within constitutional constraints and take them into account when developing new laws.