The Impact of Victim-Offender Mediation--Two Decades of Research

Victim-offender mediation is the oldest and most widely used expression of restorative justice, with more than 1,300 programs in 18 countries. While modest in proportion to many larger-scale reforms, victim-offender mediation is one of the more empirically grounded justice interventions. The authors review 38 evaluation reports addressing such questions as consumer satisfaction, victim-offender mediation as diversion, its impact on further delinquency or criminality, and its success as a means so determining and obtaining restitution.