Source: (2004) Papers presented at the Third Conference of the European Forum for Victim-Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice, ‘Restorative Justice in Europe: Where are we heading?’, Budapest, Hungary, 14-16 October. Downloaded 22 September 2005.
SACRO (Safeguarding Communities Reducing Offending) is the largest NGO (non governmental organisation)
operating in the criminal justice sector in Scotland. SACRO has pioneered communication between those
injured by crime and those responsible since the late ‘80s through its diversion from prosecution and Youth
Justice services.
Since 2002, a number of requests have been made to SACRO by Criminal Justice Social Work Departments and
the Scottish Prison Service to facilitate communication within a post sentence context between those harmed
by and those responsible for severe violent crime. SACRO has provided training from David Doerfler, an
experienced Victim-Offender Mediator from Texas USA, to meet these requests. This has led to the
development of a new SACRO initiative called TASC (Talk After Severe Crime), which operates to date on a
limited spot purchase basis.
In this new service the words ‘victim’ and ‘offender’ are replaced by: person injured and person responsible. The new
service takes its language from the broader human sciences discourse in order to maximise the potential for
increased understanding between all those affected. (excerpt)
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