Victim-offender reconciliation programs : juvenile property offender recidivism and severity of reoffense in three Tennessee counties

The Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) was marketed by the Mennonite Central Committee since 1975 as an alternative criminal justice intervention. VORP was based on a restorative rather than retributive criminal justice model. This correlational, ex-post-facto study investigated the effects of VORP on juvenile property offender recidivism and severity of reoffense in three eastern Tennessee counties (N=420). The study compared simple random samples of the VORP group (N=203) to the nonVORP group (N=217) that received traditional sentences of probation, incarceration, or fines. Results of a logistic regression indicated that VORP had a significant main effect (p=.008) on one year recidivism when controlling for age, gender, number of prior offenses, household composition, and last grade completed. "Priors" also had a significant main effect on recidivism (p=.0039). The Bonferroni inequality was used for 6 hypotheses with testwise alpha set at <.0083. Results of an ordinal logistic regression indicated that VORP had a main effect (p=.0151) in reducing severity of reoffense [0=no reoffense with no harm to others (N=305), 1=status offense, unruly, or delinquent for illegal conduct with potential harm to others (N=63), 2=delinquent against property or persons with indirect or direct harm to others (N=52)] when controlling for the same variables. VORP did not have a significant main effect on severity of reoffense at the Bonferroni level (p<.0083), but had a significant main effect on severity of reoffense at the less conservative Fisher's Protected t level (p<.05) in one of three ordinal logistic regressions.