The Impact of Victim-Offender Mediation: Two Decades of Research.

Source: (2004) In Peter C. Kratcoski, ed., Correctional Counseling and Treatment, 5th ed. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. Pp. 86-99.

Innovation and reform in criminal justice often suggest more than they deliver. Sometimes an innovation is new more in name than in underlying program values and content, and sometimes a reform is embraced with enthusiasm but without scrutiny. As one of the oldest and most widely used expressions of restorative justice around the world, victim-offender mediation (VOM) has exhibited both of these traits at times and in places. Nevertheless, VOM is, the authors assert, one of the most empirically grounded of emerging justice interventions. Against this background, the authors offer an overview of thirty eight empirical studies designed to assess the growth, implementation, and impact of VOM programs. Umbreit, Coates, and Vos summarize and comment upon the research results with particular attention to client satisfaction, fairness, restitution, diversion, recidivism, cost, and VOM and violent crimes.