Evaluation of a restorative justice-based, community-based program for people who have offended sexually: participant impact

ABSTRACT

Community Justice Initiatives, Kitchener, Canada, offers a Restorative Justice program called Revive to people impacted by sexual harm, including men who have offended sexually. This volunteer-led program treats participants with compassion while holding them accountable for sexual harm perpetrated. Program goals include reducing isolation, promoting self-awareness, and fostering healing. Based on restorative justice principles, positive community reintegration and reduction of further sexual offending are the ultimate goals of the program.

We evaluated information from a questionnaire administered at intake, after the 7-week phase, and again after participation in the peer-support group. Participants responded quantitatively about the impact of Revive on six sexual offense-related outcomes statements (e.g., gaining understanding of their triggers, understanding why they sexually offended). They also indicated the impact of Revive on psychosocial dimensions such as stigma perception and social support. Qualitative questions further elucidated the experience of Revive participation. Findings suggest that Revive has an impact on self-understanding of why they sexually offended, victim empathy, as well as stress reduction and increased self-esteem. We conclude that the restorative justice framework is a very hopeful, positive one and that the Revive program is effective at enacting restorative justice-based principles.

KEYWORDS:

• Restorative justice-based program
• sexual offending
• sex offender programs
• restorative justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The term ‘person who offended sexually’ is preferred over the term ‘sex offender’; we use both in our paper but ‘sex offender’ is pervasive in the literature at this time. Language conveys subtle attitudes and potentially results in additional stigmatization.

2. CJI has other programs that address victim-offender reconciliation for sexual offense situations specific to the persons involved and groups for survivors; however, the focus of our evaluation is only on the programs specific for men who have sexually offended.

3. One man had incomplete data resulting in n=17 for some analyses.

4. Adapted from an instrument compiled by Arai and Gallant as described in Valtchanov and Arai (2013) to assess the community re-integration of incarcerated women by way of a social support program called Stride offered by CJI.

5. Social Determinants of Health is not a published scale, per se, but based on the theory described by Raphael. These negative social consequences have been related empirically to health outcomes (Raphael, 2007).

6. Complete data was considered. If a man had incomplete data at one of the two time points, he was assigned to the group for which he had complete data. This violates random assignment but was deemed an acceptable guideline given missing data. Only two men completed the questionnaire at 3 time points; thus, most men had a 1 out of 2 chance of group assignment.

Additional information

Funding

Part of this work was supported by St. Jerome’s University under Grant IIRG430.

Notes on contributors

BJ Rye

BJ Rye, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and is cross-appointed in the Department of Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies at St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo. Her research explores various aspects of sexuality with a particular interest in attitudes toward sexuality. She has published articles regarding homosexuality, intersexuality, erotophobia–erotophilia, and adolescent behaviour.

Angela Hovey

Angela Hovey, PhD, is an assistant professor at Lakehead University in the School of Social Work. Her current research areas focus on sexual trauma, domestic violence, harm reduction, and restorative justice.

Leslie Waye

Leslie Waye is the former Revive Program Coordinator at Community Justice Initiatives. She is a Restorative Justice practitioner who has worked and studied in the sexuality field for over 15 years. Leslie oversaw programming for sexual trauma survivors, persons who have offended sexually, their respective intimate partners, and facilitated dialogues.