Victim Offender Reconciliation In Prisons

Victim-Offender reconciliation(mediation) and Conferencing in Prisons
There are many restorative justice practices that have been developed over the past many years. However, most of these practices are employed and adopted in community settings, including the Victim-Offender Reconciliation(mediation) and conferencing. This program first introduced in Canada around early 1970’s in Ontario as an experiment with the name of Victim Offender Mediation(Dhami et al, 2009). After the significant success, it has developed into Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program and began as a probation-based/post-conviction sentencing alternative inspired by the belief that victim-offender meetings could be helpful to both parties(Justice & Reconcilation,2016).

However, one of the compelling benefit of this restorative program in prison setting is that it allows direct communications between the actual offender and victim during the criminal procedure. Especially, the allowing active victim’s participation is a critical component. If we consider our society and criminal system, the role of victim is strictly limited. As an example, the representative lawyer with good knowledge about the law represents the victim at the court(변호사 ). Thus, the lawyer provides the overall arguments, thoughts, beliefs, cases, background and other crime related information at the court instead of the actual victim, in order to achieve the victory. As a result, the role of the victim is limited or sometimes completely excluded during the criminal procedure. With this regard, the victim achieve critical benefit from the VORP where it provides the active role for

Regardless of major or minor crimes, it requires lots of courage for the victim to face directly with the offender who actually has damaged significantly. In addition, unlike any other programs in the prison setting, this program does not involve any other community member other than the facilitator. This environment can potentially causes more uncomfortable to the victim which can potentially interrupt the victim from fully opening up their mind and emotion. Overall, regardless of the great intension of the program where it tries to bring the offender and victim together to restore the relationship, the complete exclusion of other members in the program provides the difficult setting for the victim to fully engage in the program and communications with the