The effect of victim‐offender mediation on severity of reoffense

This article describes an investigation of the relationship between participation in a victim‐offender reconciliation program (VORP) and subsequent reoffense by children and adolescents. Two random samples of children and adolescents were drawn: one from participants in a VORP and a second from a population who went through a more traditional juvenile justice approach. An ordinal ranking of subsequent reqffenses by these children and adolescents was constructed, and ordinal logistic regression procedures were used to test the relationship between program participation and severity of subsequent reoffense. The results suggest that, after controlling for a number of potentially confounding variables, VORP participants are less likely to reoffend within a year of their VORP meeting, and if they do reoffend, will commit less serious offenses than children and adolescents who go through a more traditional juvenile justice approach.