“Beyond Conviction,” a documentary about two violent crime victims who meet with their perpetrators in Pennsylvania, will be re-broadcast by MSNBC tomorrow night, Feb. 3, at 8 p.m. Eastern Time (check local listings in other time zones). The film describes the restorative justice approach taken in victim-offender mediation. Pennsylvania is one of the few states that uses the technique in violent crime cases.
Over five years, filmmaker Rachel Libert had exclusive access to mediation cases, following from the beginning the victims’ requests to meet with offenders, as well as the meetings themselves. Libert says, “These emotionally intense encounters challenge the role of vengeance in our criminal justice sytem and in a larger sense how we all deal with conflict in our everyday lives.” Variety.com said the film “captures a complicated terrain of unresolved hatred.”