Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1997

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Social Work

Major Professor

William R. Nugent

Committee Members

Catherine A. Faver, Schuyler W. Huck, John W. Lounsbury

Abstract

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.

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