Source: (2004) paper presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association. New York, NY.
This paper aims to examine the quality of dialogue found in one particular type of victim offender mediation that is offered in cases of severe violence called Victim
Offender Mediation/Dialogue (VOMD).1 Before addressing data from several VOMD cases, I will begin with an overview of restorative justice, which serves as the theoretical framework for VOMD programs. In doing so, I show that restorative justice is fundamentally communication oriented. Then, I will briefly discuss the VOMD program with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which served as the data set for this
analysis. Ultimately, this paper uses empirical evidence to assess the extent to which
genuine dialogue is possible in these mediation sessions. (excerpt)
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