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RESTITUTION VERSUS RETRIBUTION: THE CASE FOR VICTIM-OFFENDER MEDIATION

© Joan Fumia

In the first discussion on the topic of conflict resolution, a visitor to the site made a very thoughtful comment about the potential for conflict resolution to profoundly transform its participants. Indeed, scholars in the field are studying the capacity of mediation to go beyond the mere settlement of a dispute to actually change the attitudes and beliefs of the disputants.

What more likely context for this transformative process than victim-offender mediation? Victim-offender mediation is a process in which the perpetrator of a crime and the victim of the crime meet face to face, and, with the help of a mediator, attempt to reach an agreement that provides some type of meaningful restitution to the victim. When the victim confronts the offender with the impact of the crime, the encounter contributes to the healing of the victim by providing closure. The offender then must accept responsibility by making restitution in a form acceptable to the victim. Ideally, both victim and offender emerge from the experience in better condition than before.

Victim-offender mediation personalizes a crime so that the consequence of the offense against the victim becomes the focus rather than the crime as a violation of society's rules. The outcome sought is neither retribution, punishment, nor justice in the abstract, but instead, restorative justice. Restorative justice is the search for what the offender can do to ease the pain or loss of the victim. It is not, however, a substitute for the legal process to which the offender still must answer.

According to the information found on the web site of the Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP), http://www.vorp.com, victim-offender mediation programs have been around for more than twenty years and have been quite successful in achieving restitution agreements. Most of the programs in this country focus on nonviolent crimes and juvenile offenders, but a growing number of programs deal with drunk driving cases in which the victims sustained injuries.

Victim-offender mediation programs are found throughout the world and are sometimes referred to as restorative justice programs or projects. Perhaps the most amazing demonstration of the restorative justice process on a national scale is the recent, post-Apartheid reconciliation effort in South Africa.

In addition to the VORP web site, I found two other sites that offer useful information and links. Perhaps the best site for those who want to begin a search of the topic is the Campaign for Equity-Restorative Justice (CERJ), http://www.cerj.org. This site includes ERJ-Net, a list of links to a myriad of organizations here and around the world that are involved with restorative justice and related topics.

The copyright of the article RESTITUTION VERSUS RETRIBUTION: THE CASE FOR VICTIM-OFFENDER MEDIATION in Conflict Resolution is owned by Joan Fumia. Permission to republish RESTITUTION VERSUS RETRIBUTION: THE CASE FOR VICTIM-OFFENDER MEDIATION in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.