The Little Book of Victim Offender Conferencing

Student Name
Professor
Course Code
Date
The Little Book of Victim Offender Conferencing
Restorative practices emanated from tribal communities across the world. Criminal justice scholars trace restorative justice to a 1974 case in Ontario, Canada, where two offenders caused a sequence of chaos, destroying 22 properties within a span of two hours. The probation officer handling the case informed the judge of the need for the offenders to meet all of their victims to hear their perspectives concerning how such crimes impacted their lives, provide services or compensation, as well as request forgiveness. This practice was widely used in the probation department, creating the foundation of contemporary restorative practices in Canada, the United States, and other parts of the world. The author recommends the need for the victim and offender to meet for mediation and dialogue to allow the victim to make rationales from the offender’s perspective to offer closure to the trauma emanating from being victimized (Zehr et al.).
The comprehensive victim-offender mediation program includes intake, pre-mediation, mediation, follow-up, and victim services. In implementing these procedures, support from friends, peers, family, and parents is crucial. Restorative justice theory emphasizes the need to involve community stakeholders, including relatives, to provide insights into how the offender’s deviant behavior and actions affected the community. This is central to delivering perspectives that inform government policy and laws and thus fill gaps in the existing legal framework. Overall, the author suggests that restorative justice is tailored to ensure the victim optimally participates within the criminal justice system. The existing victim-offender mediation initiatives lack the basics of the victim-offender mediation process, thus the need to incorporate such procedures into the legal system. It is anticipated that succe...