Mediation Act Section 41 — Criminal mediation at the investigation stage

At the investigation stage mediation is available for compoundable offences, the same petty offences as in Section 35, and offences in the schedule to the Act with maximum imprisonment not exceeding three years (the schedule lists six Criminal Code offences: Sections 294 paragraph 1, 295, 296, 299 paragraph 1, 300 and 334). For the scheduled offences, Section 42 requires that the suspect has not been through criminal mediation under the Act before (subject to exceptions for negligent offences and petty offences, one of which depends on more than three years having passed since the earlier case was closed), and is not serving a final prison sentence or was released more than five years ago (subject to exceptions for negligent offences, petty offences and offences committed under age eighteen).