Empathy: Victim Impact Panels and DWI Offenders

A Victim Impact Panel (VIP) is one of many intervention methods implemented to reduce DWI recidivism. While other sentences focus on tangible punishments and rewards, a VIP provides emotional motivation to change one’s behavior and attitudes towards drinking and driving. In study one, I assessed the relationship between VIPs and empathy. Sixty-one participants attending a Victim Impact Panel completed a questionnaire immediately before and after attending a VIP and again eight weeks later. The questionnaires assessed their views about their own crime, their future behavior/intentions concerning drinking and driving and their current state of empathy (as measured by four items from the Basic Empathy Scale). Participants showed a significant increase in empathy scores after attending the VIPs. Collectively, the findings from study one suggest that VIPs can play a role in increasing victim empathy for a short period of time. In study two, I assessed the roles that severity of injury, gender and age play in affecting feelings of empathy for a DWI victim speaking at a VIP. After reading a partial transcript from the original VIP, 90 University of Wisconsin-La Crosse undergraduate students completed a questionnaire that assessed their feelings of empathy, as measured by items from the BES, perception of the crime, and thoughts on future drinking and driving behavior. Older victims elicited significantly higher levels of empathy than did younger victims. Additionally, male participants reported significantly lower levels of empathy than female participants regardless of victim characteristics. Additional analyses report no significant interactions between the victim characteristics and participant gender. Overall, study two suggests that victim characteristics as well as participant characteristics play an important role in affecting empathy levels elicited by speakers at VIPs.