Restorative Justice & Victim-Offender Mediation

Restorative justice is a different way of thinking about crimes and our responses to them. Instead of the focus on punishment as justice, restorative justice focuses on the harm caused by crime, repairing the harm done to victims and reducing future harm by preventing crime. It requires offenders to take meaningful responsibility for their actions and for the harm they have caused. It seeks redress for victims, recompense by offenders, and reintegration of both within the community.

Victim Sensitive - Offender Mediation/Dialogue is a restorative justice approach which has been used in juvenile crime for many years and is being increasingly used in adult crimes including those involving severe violence, including homicides. We work with the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program Information & Resource Center and Director, Marty Price, a pioneer in this work. The dialogue between a woman convicted of a drunk driving death and members of the victim’s family, which Marty facilitated, has received national recognition and has become a “poster child” for the healing power of restorative justice for victims and offenders. Marty  has mediated a number of other such cases and has trained victim-offender dialogue facilitators in many states and countries. He's consulted with media ranging from Oprah to the A&E Network's upcoming series on restorative justice.

In general, victim-offender mediation (sometimes also called victim sensitive-offender dialogue) brings victims face-to-face with the perpetrators of their crimes. With the assistance of a specially trained mediator, victims have the opportunity to speak their minds and their feelings to the one who most ought to hear them. Many victims have found that these meetings have therapeutic effects, healing deep emotional wounds and that they are able to go on with their lives with a new sense of power and promise. For offenders, crime is personalized as offenders learn the human consequences of their actions and the offenders take meaningful responsibility for their actions. Where the victim and offender have a continuing relationship, the process allows both the opportunity to bring closure and healing to the crime and restore their relationship. The process is always voluntary for both the victim and offender and involves individual meetings with victims and offenders to allow them an opportunity to consider the process and prepare them for the face-to-face meeting.  

Victim-offender meetings have been used by police, probation, and the court system for decades. The most extensive body of research, developed in community-based and local government-sponsored restorative justice programs, has shown that victim-offender mediation has a substantial effect on reducing recidivism and a high rate of satisfaction among victims and offenders who participated in the process.

For more about Victim-Offender Mediation & Restorative Justice, visit www.vorp.com.

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Healers of Conflicts Law & Conflict Resolution Center
Mail to: P.O. Box 306, Asheville, North Carolina 28802 * Telephone: 828-253-3355 
jkimwright@healersofconflicts.com