Evaluations of the Sycamore Tree Project®
These documents provide an analysis of the Sycamore Tree Project®. Some come from an anecdotal perspective while others measure specific outcomes.
- Sycamore Tree Project®: What’s the impact? A digest of England and New Zealand research
- The Sycamore Tree Project® (STP) offers unrelated victims and offenders the opportunity to discuss the reality of crime and its impact on their lives. Victims tell their stories and hear the stories of offenders. Offenders come to understand the impact of crime on victims and the community and take responsibility for their behaviour. The participant comments above demonstrate the powerful impact these exchanges can have.
- Leon Bakker: Sycamore Tree Project Impact Evaluation for Prison Fellowship New Zealand
- Forty nine offenders completed an attitude to offending measure (CRIME_PICS II) before and after the Sycamore Tree programme showed significant changes on all scales in the expected direction. While the reduction in victim empathy was not as great as might be expected the changes were nevertheless significant.
- Margaret Marshall: A Consideration of the Sycamore Tree Programme and Survey Results from the Perspective of a Restorative Justice Practitioner
- The Sycamore Tree Programme (STP), delivered by Prison Fellowship of New Zealand, is a restorative justice programme which brings together a panel of six inmates and six crime victims over eight two-hour sessions. The victims attending these meetings are not the particular victims of the inmates. The programme includes large and small group discussions, victim/offender interactions, role-plays, and readings that create a contemporary retelling of the biblical story of Zaccheus, a man who admits to his offending and sets about to restore to his victims what he has defrauded them of.
- Sheffield Hallam University -- An Evaluation of The Sycamore Tree Programme
- The Prison Fellowship have been delivering the Sycamore Tree Programme throughout 50 penal establishments since 1998. Prisoners that have participated completed a psychometric questionnaire, Crime Pics II, both immediately before and after the programme as a part of an evaluation framework designed to measure the programme impact. Data was collected and in December 2004 Sheffield Hallam University was commissioned to undertake a retrospective analysis of the questionnaires. This report reflects the statistical outcome of that analysis.
- Lynne Ridgeway: Observations of a Visitor—Sycamore Tree Project®
- Prepared by Lynne Ridgeway of the Victim-Offender Mediation Unit who attended the final session of the Pilot Programme at Acacia Prison 2005.
- Margaret Wilson: Inside out: how does an in-prison victim awareness programme affect recidivism?
- This dissertation examines the Sycamore Tree Programme (STP), a programme delivered inside prisons that seeks to utilise the rehabilitative opportunities imprisonment offers by combining it with the essential element of Restorative Justice (RJ): a meeting between offender, victim, and the community. The name Sycamore Tree is taken from the Biblical story of Zacchæus (Zac), the corrupt tax collector, who climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus (Luke, 19:3-5). He becomes a symbolic offender. Jesus noticed him, called him down and they met over a meal. The meeting changed Zac’s life, which he demonstrated by making restitution to his victims and giving half of his wealth to the poor. This story provides the restorative elements of a meeting, mediation, and reparation/restitution.
- An evaluation of the Sycamore Tree Programme: based on an analysis of Crime Pics II Data. Simon Feasey and Patrick Williams. (2009). Hallam Centre for Community Justice. [EN]
- Prison Fellowship have been delivering the Sycamore Tree Programme throughout 50 penal establishments since 1998 with more than 10,000 prisoners taking part. Prisoners that have participated completed a psychometric questionnaire, Crime Pics II, both immediately before and after the programme as a part of an evaluation framework designed to measure the programme impact. In 2005 the Hallam Centre for Community Justice reported on the analysis of 2197 completed pre and post programme questionnaires. This subsequent analysis reports on a further 5007 questionnaires completed since 2005.
