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from the article in the TImes Colonist: One family sat across from the Greater Victoria woman whose dangerous driving caused the death of their brother, John Caspell. Another woman, Shannon Moroney, sat on the other side of the glass from her newlywed husband, in jail for brutally raping two women in their Peterborough home.

The healing,and the transformation of both the victim and the offender from fear,vulnerability, and from shame and guilty is through restorative dialogue,apology and reparation from [...]

from the article by Javed Khan: If you were a victim of crime, would you want to meet the offender? What would you say to them? A burglary victim might, for example, want to talk about the inconvenience, the hassle of sorting out the mess and replacing what has been stolen. They could spell out that some things - just objects to an outsider - are completely irreplaceable, and how sentimental value outweighs any financial cost. But we all know that actions have unintended consequences, and burglary isn't just about what's been taken, it's about what's been left behind too.

The Listening Project sought to include the voices of victim advocates in the development of restorative justice practice. The article below is an excerpt from the report of the project with a link to the full-text. The report was written by y: Harry Mica, Mary Achilles, Ellen Halbert, Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, and Howard Zehr. It is reprinted here by permission.

A sensitive issue for restorative justice programmes is how to approach crime victims about participating in the programmes. In this article, Eric Gilman, restorative justice coordinator for Clark County Juvenile Court, suggests that programmes should respond to victims restoratively, viewing them as people who have needs growing out of the harms they experienced in the crime, rather than simply as possible participants in a VOM process

The Sycamore Tree Project® is an in-prison programme bringing unrelated victims and offenders together for conversations about crime. The programme allows them to reflect together on the consequences of crime and the steps needed to address the harm that has resulted.

Bridges to Life is an in-prison restorative justice programme that facilitates meetings between offenders and unrelated victims. This article is drawn from a paper by Marilyn Armour, assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. The complete article is attached.

from the entry on Mediation Services -- Thinking Out Loud: One of the ongoing challenges we face here at Mediation Services is how to meaningfully involve corporations and large businesses in the restorative justice process. The process is relatively clear when there is an offender and a victim – or even when there are multiple victims and/or offenders. Individuals have needs and interests and a mediator works to bring people together for meaningful and fruitful exchange. Of course, every situation is unique and demands an “out of the box” thinking in order to make any process effective for the participants. But when the “victim” is a large corporation, there are at least two unique challenges for a mediator to address:

from Robert M. Hoatson's post on Road to Recovery: Based on Road to Recovery’s on-the-ground experience helping the abused cope with the effects of their abuse, we offer to Pope Benedict and his colleagues in the hierarchy the following suggested action steps that will help restore clergy abuse victims to fullness of life (these steps do not preclude the necessary and/or statutory reporting of all crimes to local and/or national law enforcement):

As prison populations continue to rise, faith-based and restorative justice programs show promise in influencing offenders' internal motivations and external behaviors. Using a one-group, pretest-posttest design, this pilot study found significant change in offenders' (n=102) moral motivations (empathy, perspective taking, forgiveness, proneness to forgive, daily spiritual experiences, and relationships with others) after their self-selected participation in a 14-week faith-based program that draws from the principles of restorative justice. Hierarchical regression models were used to examine the impact of reported subscription to Christianity on pretests and score changes. At pre-test, Christian participants (n = 66) were more likely to forgive than non-Christian participants (n = 33) who conversely were more likely to see the perspectives of others, Christian offenders had significantly higher change scores on perspective taking and empathic concern than non-Christian participants. Findings have implications for the use of faithbased programs and victim-centered curriculums to change offenders' moral motivations and for matching faith-based Christian programs with Christian participants.