Mark Umbreit
Mark Umbreit is the founding Director of the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking.
He is an internationally recognized practitioner and scholar with more than 30 years of experience as a mediator, trainer, researcher. He has authored four books and more than 140 articles, book chapters, and monographs in the field of restorative justice and mediation.
Mark’s work in the field of restorative justice began in the late 1970's. Under the leadership of Howard Zehr and others, he played a supportive role in the development and funding of the first Victim Offender Reconciliation Program in the United States which started in Elkhart, Indiana.
As a practicing mediator, he specializes in facilitating a dialogue between family survivors/victims of severe violence, including murder, and the offender/inmate.
Over the years, Mark has
- served as a mediator in numerous cases
- provided training in victim offender mediation to thousands of people in North America and Europe
- provided technical assistance related to the development of new victim offender mediation programs in more than 40 states and numerous other countries.
He serves as a senior consultant with the Balanced and Restorative Justice Project, funded by the Office for Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention (U.S. Department of Justice) and based at the Community Justice Institute, Florida Atlantic University. For the past 21 years he has served as a consultant/trainer for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Important Idea:
Victim offender mediation (also referred to as victim offender conferencing) represents a very promising pathway to restorative justice through dialogue.
From more than 20 years of experience in many thousands of cases and more than 42 empirical studies, it has clearly been found to be a practical and time tested approach that results in many positive outcomes for victims, offenders, family members, and the larger community.
The process of victim offender mediation or conferencing has been found to be most effective when the following concerns are addressed:
- Victim sensitive procedures that are respectful and offer choices.
- Respectful treatment of those who commit criminal acts.
- Voluntary participation by all parties.
- Encouragement of family members or other support people to participate in the process, but respecting the choice of victim and offender if they prefer to meet one-on-one.
- In-person preparation of the involved parties before they meet each other.
- Use of a style of mediation that is “dialogue driven” not “settlement driven”.
- Flexibility, so that the process can be adapted to the specific needs and cultural context of the parties.
- Avoidance of a “one size fits all” approach that assumes either a small one-on-one session or a larger group session with many support people is always best for all people and anchoring this decision in the expressed needs of the victim and offender.
Mark S. Umbreit
Leading Edge. Mark is currently involved in three major initiatives with colleagues from the University of Minnesota. They are:
- preparing the final report and book manuscript on the first and largest multi-site study of the impact of victim offender mediation and dialogue in crimes of severe violence, with homicide being the largest category.
- studying the impact of systemic change toward restorative justice in two counties of Minnesota.
- have initiated the Community Peacemaking Project: Responding to Hate Crimes and Intolerance Through Restorative Justice Dialogue,an action-research project with a nationwide focus.
Reach Mark Umbreit at mumbreit@tc.umn.edu http://2ssw.che.umn.edu/rjp/
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