Victims and the Sycamore Tree Project®
The Sycamore Tree Project® (STP)is an expression of restorative justice bringing together unrelated victims and offenders for dialogue about the impact of crime and topics such as taking responsibility, making amends, confession, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This dialogue provides each victim and each prisoner participant a voice in understanding crime and in finding more positive ways of responding. However, some Prison Fellowship national ministries encounter difficulties in recruiting those who have been affected by crime (victims) for STP . This reality can be discouraging and cause some to seek to run the programme without victims.
Yet, the first essential element for identifying whether or not a programme can be called Sycamore Tree Project®is: Victims and offenders meet together to discuss the impact of crime and share their personal stories. This means that victim participation is a vital part of the programme and can’t be done away with when difficulties arise. There are reasons for this:
- The personal stories told by victim participants help prisoners understand the human impact of crime (often for the first time)
- Interaction with the victim participants offers prisoners the opportunity to interact and relate to members of the non-offending community.
- Offenders learn/experience acceptance as equally valued members of the community.
While these are benefits for prisoners, the programme is not intended to use victims as “props” for serving prisoners. Falling within the restorative justice paradigm, STP seeks to serve victims in their journey after experiencing crime. In this way, the programme:
- Offers victims a forum for relating the impact of crime in their lives and on their families.
- Allows victims to ask questions of offenders (though not their own) and gain a better understanding of the issues related to criminal offenses
- Provides victims the opportunity to see the growing understanding on the part of offenders in relation to the harm of crime.
- Empowers victims to take control of their own journey in moving beyond the criminal offense they experienced.
