Victim Offender Mediation Summary

Tinneke Van Camp of California State University, Fresno and Jo-Anne Wemmers of the University of Montreal conducted a research of how victims might like to be offered the restorative justice approach to resolving their issues. They provide, “Independent studies reveal that when done properly, restorative justice (RJ) practices outperform criminal justice proceedings in meeting victims' concerns for insight, voice, and fairness and, as a result, can have therapeutic value. Introducing RJ to victims of crime should be done responsibly, and, therefore, it is important to understand whether and how victims want to be informed about RJ,” (Van Camp, Wemmers 2016).

For their research, they decided to interview 34 victims using two different approaches

Dahmi decided to research specifically, “the prevalence and nature of the apologies offered by offenders to their victims during face-to-face mediations” (Dhami 2016). Her conclusions are that being given the opportunity to offer and receive an apology may be the main reason that offenders and victims choose to participate in the process. It can also be the only outcome of the mediation process (Dhami 2016). Dhami’s research helps further the thought on what constitutes an apology and how the apologies come about in the mediation

They also explain that “capturing the vitality of participant experiences in ways that help us conceptualize, evaluate, and assess programs while doing justice to the perspective of the many different actors is a daunting task,” (Umbreit, Coates, Vos 2007). They help to see that it is a strenuous task for people facilitating and quite actually going through any type of restorative justice process to brave the experience and put in the work to make as little as harmful as