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Doctoral research project Person in charge of the project: Professor Ivo Aertsen Title: Encountering 'The Other': Victim Offender Dialogue in Serious Crime
Research Question: What are the major impacts and outcomes of facilitating dialogue encounters between victims and offenders in crimes involving severe violence? Project Description: The researcher is the program developer and principal dialogue facilitator ('mediator') for the Victim Offender Mediation Program (VOMP) model first proposed to the Canadian Government in 1990 and in use since then in prison settings for cases involving the most serious crimes in the criminal code. In the early days, using restorative justice values and principles for processing cases in serious criminal matters was highly controversial and even sharply contested, especially for use in the entire range of sexual offences and other crimes of severe violence. But this program, founded as it was by careful practitioners with a view to those same critiques and steeped in understanding of trauma and recovery for victims and effective treatment modalities for offenders, has won the respect of even its detractors over the past two decades, primarily because of the evidenced outcomes and the testimonies of the participants themselves as to how these processes provide them needed voice and agency. There are no case types excluded, including rape and all forms of sexual assault, armed offences including aggravated assault, attempted murder, and (with family survivors of homicide as participants), the entire range of homicide offences, up to and including multiple murder. This research project will utilize a qualitative research multiple case study design to examine a sample of ca. 25 of the cases referred to the program from both victim and offender 'sides' in which these participants were brought together in face-to-face dialogues between the years 1992 and 2003. The individual case studies illustrate the steps of the program's involvement with victim and offender participants: from referral and assessment of victim and offender readiness through each of the preparatory steps, to the face-to-face therapeutic encounter itself. These narratives demonstrate the outcomes observed and reported by those participants (in some cases by professionals working with them). Outcomes are then listed and analyzed according to the themes that emerge from the data: "the reality" of the encounter, "the power of the process" and its impacts: 1) the marked diminishing for the trauma survivors of post-traumatic stressors previously suffered, (measured by accepted inventories and DSM and WHO diagnostics), and their accounts of the process and its relation to their post-traumatic growth; 2) the growth of empathy in offenders toward those victims and its impact on their attitudes and resultant decisions regarding making apology and amends that had meaning to their victims, as well as whether those offenders continue to offend or to desist upon release. The case studies show significant impact on reoffending, but recidivism studies done by the Canadian Government on this same population are cited to underscore the author's findings. As background to the development and contextualization of the VOMP model, I also include sections which: 1) describe the "Tributary Streams" of Restorative Justice, tracing these to their sources, in the history of the development of restorative justice theory to its present expressions, forms and models, including: Canadian Aboriginal Peacemaking, Sentencing and Healing Circles, to conferencing models in Australia, New Zealand and the Islands of the South Pacific) which cause them to stand out as promising restorative justice program models; 2) illustrate from both my case study data and relevant literature, the phenomenon of apology offered in the context of victim offender dialogues. What differentiates an apology which is perceived as self-serving and seen as an affront, from one which is seen to be heartfelt, genuine, possessing power to accomplish what nothing else can? What elements give apology substance and meaning, and make them efficacious as an aspect in the healing of relationships, even in the aftermath of heinouscrime and human atrocity? How do those apologies, offered by offenders to their victims and coupled with meaningful amends commitments, play out in the case studies? How does offender accountability and responsibility taking, confession and truth-telling in these meetings (especially after former denial of guilt or demonstration of remorse for harm done), open the door to the possibility of forgiveness, release and increased wellbeing? 3) examine and review relevant trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trauma recovery literature specifically in order to illustrate the needs and psychological harms suffered by victims of criminal offences (and which often prove to be among the criminogenic factors for offenders). In this section I also provide a theoretical psychological, neurological 'grounding' for how VOMP processes address needs of trauma sufferers, creating what research respondents have called a 'therapeutic watershed', often speeding recovery from the post-traumatic syndromes. I underscore these findings with references to similar theoretical notions surfacing increasingly in the literature of post-traumatic stress.
4) conclude by drawing findings from the research to a nexus which will posit possibilities for further program development and new sentencing models for criminal cases based in a restorative, healing and collaborative approach, as opposed to existing contemporary criminal justice models with their primarily punitive, adversarial, destructive and, (in terms of fiscal and social costs), their increasingly indefensible net-negative outcomes. PhD student: David L. Gustafson