Participants' Attitudes in the Utah Juvenile Victim‐Offender Mediation Program

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper describes an archival evaluation of the Juvenile Court Victim‐Offender Mediation Program (VOMP) of the Utah State Courts in Salt Lake City. From 1997 to 2000, 147 victims and 330 offenders reported their attitudes towards their experiences in VOMP. Although victims were more satisfied than offenders for some outcomes, all participants reported exceptionally high satisfaction. These promising results are consistent with other published studies on the effectiveness of VOMP and other forms of restorative justice in demonstrating the promise of mediation in criminal justice.