Victim-Offender Reconciliation Programs: Juvenile Property Offender Recidivism and Severity of Reoffense in Three Tennessee Counties

Source: (1997) PhD dissertation, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.

The Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) was marketed by the Mennonite Central Committee since 1975 as an alternative criminal justice intervention. VORP was based on a restorative rather than retributive criminal justice model. This correlational, ex-post-facto study investigated the effects of VORP on juvenile property offender recidivism and severity of reoffense in three eastern Tennessee counties (N=420). The study compared simple random samples of the VORP group (N=203) to the nonVORP group (N=217) that received traditional sentences of probation, incarceration, or fines. Results of a logistic regression indicated that VORP had a significant main effect (p=.008) on one year recidivism when controlling for age, gender, number of prior offenses, household composition, and last grade completed. “Priorsâ€? also had a significant main effect on recidivism (p=.0039). The Bonferroni inequality was used for 6 hypotheses with testwise alpha set at <.0083. Author's abstract. (excerpt)