The Office of Dispute Resolution has released the Fiscal Year 2019-2020 Victim Youth Conferencing Evaluation Report. During the reported timeframe, 15 counties referred 290 cases to ODR-approved mediation centers with 217 of those resulting in a Victim Youth Conference.

Victim Youth Conferencing (VYC) is a restorative justice process that provides youth and those they have harmed with an opportunity to talk about and understand the impacts of the youth’s actions. Together they determine how the youth can repair the harm by developing a reparations plan. The VYC process is victim oriented. To ensure the youth is appropriate for this type of process, the facilitator conducts an assessment before the conference. Also, the victim has a choice about participating and may choose not to. When this is the case, a victim surrogate is used in place of the victim and speaks from their own experience and perspective; surrogates do not speak for the actual victim.  

In 2015, the VYC program was piloted in three judicial districts and in 2018 the program was expanded statewide. The Evaluation report provides some historical context as well as presents case data from the 2019-2020 fiscal year.

Highlights:

• In 285 cases for which case referral data was available, 42.1% of the cases were classified as pre-court and pre-diversion; 38.2% were court-diverted cases; and 19.6% were post-adjudicated cases.
• 96.3% of VYCs resulted in a reparation plan.
• 86.1% of the youth successfully fulfilled all components of their reparation plan and 10.0% fulfilled at least half of the requirements.
• 46% of the cases were the result of an assault or mutual assault, and other offenses include theft, disturbing the peace, criminal mischief, vandalism/property damage, disorderly conduct, and trespassing.

The full evaluation report is available at https://supremecourt.nebraska.gov/sites/default/files/2019-2020-Juvenile-Victim-Offender-Conferencing.pdf