Victim Satisfaction with Victim-Offender Mediation

The study’s target group was victims of crime who participated in a victim-offender mediation conducted by the organization NEUSTART. The focus was on their experiences in the mediation and on their satisfaction with both process and outcome. It was possible to evaluate 345 questionnaires from all over Austria.

Four categories structured the survey. Questions on the organizational framework were followed by an analysis of the respondents' perception of the NEUSTART staff, under consideration of the positive or negative outcome of the mediation process. Moreover, the evaluation took particular account of conflict type and gender. Finally, the focus was on the results of the victim-offender mediation and how the interviewees assessed their experiences with NEUSTART.

In general, the current analysis provides positive results. With regard to almost all questions, more than 70 percent were very satisfied: esp. with regard to the performance and behavior of the employees, the mediation process and organizational aspects. In most cases, less than ten percent disagreed with a positive statement or were dissatisfied with an aspect of the victim-offender mediation. The analysis by conflict type revealed that victims of neighborhood conflicts in particular were dissatisfied. Mainly satisfied are persons who were involved in family conflicts or conflicts at work, as well as victims of partner violence - the numerically largest group. The results for this type show that the respondents rated almost all statements more positively than others.

Neither region nor age seemed to have a strong influence on satisfaction with the victim-offender mediation in most cases. The variable gender had an impact on the respondents' emotional states, with women more often than men reporting negative emotions during the meetings.

The comparison with the results of a previous study (Altweger/Hitzl 2001) showed an unchanged positive or even improved result in many respects. This indicates a very constant satisfactory implementation of victim-offender mediation by NEUSTART. Differences between the two studies could be found primarily with regard to the detailed responses of the sexes; in particular, trust in the victim-offender among women seems to have decreased slightly over the past 20 years. Women are now somewhat more critical of the idea of re-engaging in this process than they were in the previous study. Further examination of this finding would be desirable, especially since the proportion of women who participate in a victim-offender mediation as victims is always higher than that of men. Nevertheless, it must also be emphasized here that the results of the present study reflect a generally very positive picture, which is characterized by great trust in and satisfaction with NEUSTART.