Victim Impact: Listen and Learn

A component effort, Victim Impact: Listen and Learn, helps decrease the likelihood that offenders of violent crime will repeat their offenses, thereby reducing the number of crime victims in our state.

This 12-week training course, led by senior Victims' Voices Heard facilitators, is currently being conducted at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware and Sussex Correctional Institution in Georgetown, Delaware and reaching as many as 50 residents each year, in each institution, before they are released. VVH is seeking to facilitate the Victim Impact: Listen and Learn program in other facilities in the next 2 years. It is our hope to have the program established in all correctional facilities; incarceration and work release, in Delaware by the end of 2014. At which time we hope to offer the program to 435 offenders each year.

By enabling offenders to accept responsibility, achieve empathy with victims and understand why they committed their crimes, this training results in less disruptive behavior among inmates, greater participation in self-improvement programs and a decreased likelihood of further violence after they return to society.

Using curriculum from the Office for Victims of Crime, 14 Participants in each session will engage in:

12 week session

Focus on victim empathy

Hear from various survivors of crime; Murder, Domestic Violence, Vehicular Homicide, Rape,Assault, Child Sexual Assault

Agency presentations: Domestice Violence, Sexual Assault, Victims' Advocates

Group discussions and exercises

Pre/Post testing

Tracking after release to measure recidivism rates