Resources on Victim Offender Dialogue - Research
Victim-Offender Mediation: Three Decades of Practice and Research (2004)
The current findings suggest that to the extent that specific programs are confined to offering VOM relatively early at the pre-sentence stage (as a formal part of the criminal prosecution), this may pose an impediment for establishing mediated contact in (very) serious cases in which victims experience high levels of harm. Conversely, VOM programs operating at later, post-sentence stages only may be associated with lower levels of contact for offenses that inflicted relatively low levels of harm among victims: they may consider the offense too long ago and/or too trivial at that stage to participate.
Putting a Human Face on Crimes: A Qualitative Study on Restorative Justice Processes for Youths (2011)
Restorative justice conferences including Victim Offender Mediation (VOM) are rapidly increasing. Due to a lack of participants’ accounts on their experiences, gaining knowledge on how restorative justice works from their perspective is critical, especially to further development of justice policy and practice. In this exploratory qualitative study we interviewed 37 participants in a VOM operating in a mid-sized Midwestern city in the United States. In this article, we examine some youths’ experiences in their VOM to deepen our understanding of how and why restorative discourses work. Findings suggest that meeting their victims through VOM helped the youths realize the extent...