Albuquerque Victim's Offender Mediation Program

The Victim–Offender Mediation Program (VOMP) in Albuquerque, N.M., was initiated in early 1988 as a component of the New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution. It was cosponsored by the local juvenile probation department of the State Youth Authority. The program was designed to provide victims the opportunity to meet their offenders in a safe and structured setting for dialogue, negotiation, and problem solving. In addition to victim mediation services, the Center for Dispute Resolution operated a parent–child mediation program, a school mediation program, and a mediation program for youth in correctional facilities. In 1990 and 1991 the program had a caseload of approximately 591. It served a jurisdiction with a population of about 250,000, including large Hispanic and Native American communities.

The mission of this program is to provide services that allow both victims and offenders to participate in a process where both parties have a sense of restored wholeness in their lives and in their communities. This wholeness is manifested when parties are feeling a sense of safety and trust in their communities and in their relationships with self and others. It is the goal of this organization to provide a sense of justice that repairs the damage done and restores relationships, both personal and communal, to their original state to the extent possible.

The Albuquerque VOMP participated in the first large cross-site evaluation of victim–offender mediation services. The other programs studied were located in Austin, Texas; Minneapolis, Minn.; and Oakland, Calif. The study used a nonequivalent control group design with pretest and posttest. The evaluation findings demonstrate that victim–offender mediation at each site resulted in juvenile offenders committing considerably fewer additional crimes during the 1-year follow-up period than similar offenders in the court-administered restitution program. They also tended to commit crimes that were less serious than the offense of referral. It should be noted, however, that this finding is not statistically significant. The evaluation also found high levels of client satisfaction (90 percent of victims and 91 percent of offenders) and perceptions of fairness (83 percent of victims and 89 percent of offenders). Moreover, victims who participated in the mediation process were significantly more likely to view the system as fair than similar victims who did not participate in mediation. The mediation process also had a strong impact on the likelihood of offenders successfully completing their restitution obligation to their victims.