Victim-Offender Dialogue
Prison-based Victim-Offender Dialogue programmes make it possible for victims to meet with their actual prisoners while they are still in prison. These meetings seldom have an effect on the prisoners' sentence length (although they may lead to the victim changing their position concerning parole). The primary purpose is for the person harmed and the one who harmed them to have the opportunity to meet, talk about the crime and its impact, and discuss anything else of interest to the parties.
National affiliates periodically have the opportunity to organize these sorts of meetings, often in the aftermath of the Sycamore Tree Project. These are powerful meetings with great potential to benefit the victims as well as the offender.
For more information, check out Victim-Offender Mediation and Victim-Offender Dialogue at www.restorativejustice.org.
The following articles discuss these meetings.
- Restorative Justice in Prisons: The Possibility of Change (2001)
- Tim Newell served as a prison governor in England for over three decades. Retired from the Prison Service, he now works as a restorative justice facilitator. In this paper, he reports on a six month project he carried out as a Cropwood Fellow (a program of the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University) on the potential of restorative practice in prisons. Specifically, through this project he examined the extent to which concepts of restorative justice, developed in community settings, can be applied in custodial settings. After defining restorative justice, he discusses some characteristics of correctional systems, the nature of his project and research method, and key results of his research.
- Victim Sensitive Victim Offender Mediation Training Manual Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime.
- Emphasizing a sensitivity to victims, this is a comprehensive manual for training practitioners in victim offender mediation. It includes the following material: overview of victim offender mediation (e.g., when are cases referred, how it is different from other mediation, what is research showing); key points in the training and background narrative for this kind of mediation (e.g., what is restorative justice, understanding crime victims, working with offenders); and sample letters and restitution agreements.
- Facilitator Training Manual Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Ministry of Justice.
- In late 2001 the New Zealand Ministry of Justice initiated a pilot program of court-referred restorative justice conferences in three court districts. The conferences in the pilot program are managed by facilitators who have been trained and approved by the Ministry of Justice. This document consists of materials for training facilitators in the processes, skills, and information needed to manage a constructive conference. After an introduction to the pilot program and the manual itself, the training modules cover the following topics: the nature of restorative justice; restorative justice conferencing in this pilot program; victim and offender issues; cross-cultural issues; facilitation skills; preparation for a conference; and the post-conference process.
- No Future without Forgiveness: The practice of Victim-Offender Reconciliation in NZ
- In my presentation today I will speak about PFNZ’s work in prisons that focus on programmes and processes that address restorative justice values and principles.
