Victim Offender Dialogues (VOD)
A Victim Offender Dialogue (VOD) is a face-to-face meeting between a person who was harmed and the person responsible for the harm. The VOD is an in-depth, yearlong process with significant preparation, involving up to 8 meetings each with both the survivor and the person responsible and culminating in face-to-face meetings with both people. The Dialogue usually takes place within a prison, but can also happen after the person responsible for harm has been released from prison. The Dialogue process can include letter exchanges as part of the process or as an alternative to a face-to-face meeting.
Nationally, most VODs are facilitated by correctional staff, rather than people directly impacted by violence. In California, which has a “volunteer” model of community-based facilitation, Mend Collaborative is innovative in that it centers the skills and experiences of survivors and formerly incarcerated people to work together as colleagues—we are the only organization in the state to do so. Currently, in California VOD is unfamiliar to most survivors, where only twenty percent are registered with the Office of Victim Services and Survivor Rights.
From a survivor who participated in a VOD:
“The justice system pits survivors and offenders against each other, breeding anger, fear, and hate, but how can we learn from each other and understand each other if we are afraid of each other? Victim Offender Dialogues can bridge that gap, create broader understanding between survivors and offenders, and ultimately provide a level of healing for both parties that can’t be achieved any other way. That kind of resource should be shouted from the rooftops, not buried, only to be found by chance.”
–Jody