MENU TITLE: Community Mediation Programs: Developments and Challenges. Series: Issues and Practices NIJ Published: July 1997 185 pages 406,218 bytes U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice Community Mediation Programs: Developments and Challenges by Daniel McGillis July 1997 ------------------------------ U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs 633 Indiana Avenue N.W. Washington, DC 20531 Janet Reno Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice John C. Dwyer Acting Associate Attorney General Laurie Robinson Assistant Attorney General Jeremy Travis Director, National Institute of Justice ------------------------------ Justice Information Center World Wide Web Site http://www.ncjrs.org ------------------------------ Issues and Practices in Criminal Justice is a publication series of the National Institute of Justice. Each report presents the program options and management issues in a topic area, based on a review of research and evaluation findings, operational experience, and expert opinion on the subject. The intent is to provide information to make informed choices in planning, implementing, and improving programs and practice in criminal justice. ------------------------------ National Institute of Justice Jeremy Travis Director Cheryl Crawford Program Monitor ------------------------------ Prepared for the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, by Abt Associates Inc., under contract #OJP-94-C-007. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. ------------------------------ The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime. ------------------------------ NCJ 165698 ------------------------------ Table of Contents Attorney General's Foreword Foreword Acknowledgments Preface Endnotes Executive Summary Overview of Developments Diversification of Dispute Resolution Services Resources for Program Design, Support, and Funding The Impact of Programs on the Quality of Justice and Related Measures Major Issues Confronting the Community Mediation Field Observations Regarding the Current Status of the Community Mediation Field Chapter 1: An Overview of Developments in the Community Mediation Field A Brief History of the Evolution of Community Mediation Programs Factors Influencing the Evolution of Community Mediation Programs A Growing Concern with Limits on Access to Justice Arising from Court Case Backlog, Delay, and Costs The Reduced Role of Traditional Informal Dispute Resolvers (Such As Extended Families) Due to Increased Mobility and Urbanization Changing Perceptions Regarding the Appropriateness and Effectiveness of Court Case Processing versus Alternative Dispute Processing Methods An Increased Interest in the Role of Community Members in Resolving Conflicts The Ebb and Flow of Federal and Foundation Funding to Support Innovations and the Transition to Local Funding Support The Role of National, State, and Local Organizations in Fostering or Inhibiting Program Growth Major Types of Community Mediation Programs Government-Sponsored Mediation Programs Community-Based Mediation Programs Dispute Resolution Mechanisms Conciliation Mediation Arbitration Facilitation Program Staffing, Community Mediators, and Program Budgets Program Staffing Community Mediators Program Budgets Major Trends in the Community Mediation Field Diversification Specialization The Replication of Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Institutional Settings The Use of Community Mediation Programs as Training Resources Expanded Roles in Handling Public Disputes Expanded Roles in Handling Intergroup Conflicts An Increased Concern with Quality Control and Qualifications Institutionalization Key Issues for Community Mediation Programs Conclusion Endnotes Chapter 2: The Diversification of Dispute Resolution Services Criminal Case Processing Civil Case Processing School-Based Dispute Resolution Related Dispute Prevention Initiatives Domestic Relations/Custody Dispute Resolution Intergroup Dispute Resolution Public Policy Disputes Victim-Offender Mediation Efforts Additional Areas of Application Comprehensive Statewide Dispute Resolution System Conclusion Endnotes Chapter 3: Establishing and Refining Community Mediation Programs: Resources for Program Design, Support, and Funding Support From National Organizations for Community Mediation Programs The Role of National Organizations in the Initial Growth of Community Mediation Programs Current Major Sources of National Support National Association for Community Mediation American Bar Association National Institute for Dispute Resolution Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution American Arbitration Association National Institute of Justice Academy of Family Mediators National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution Statewide Program Assistance State Associations of Programs New York State Association of Community Dispute Resolution Centers Massachusetts Association of Mediation Programs and Practitioners Mediation Network of North Carolina Statewide Governmental Programs That Assist Community Mediation Programs Statewide Governmental Programs Designed Specifically to Assist Community Mediation Programs Community Dispute Resolution Centers Program of the Unified Court System of the State of New York Community Dispute Resolution Program of the Michigan Supreme Court Massachusetts District Court Mediation Program Statewide Governmental Programs That Serve a Variety of Forms of Dispute Resolution Programs, Including Community Dispute Resolution Efforts Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution of the Supreme Court of Hawaii Local Programs Providing Extensive Technical Assistance and Training Conclusion Endnotes Chapter 4: Assessing the Impact of Programs on the Quality of Justice and Related Measures Assessing the Quality of Justice Major Available Measures of the Quality of Justice Dispute Resolution Rates Disputant Perceptions of the Process and Agreements Satisfaction with the Process and with Community Mediators Perceptions of Fairness of the Process Satisfaction with the Terms of the Agreement Measures of the Stability of Dispute Settlement Over Time Conclusion About Research Assessing Quality- of-Justice Measures Assessing Program Impacts on Case Processing: Efficiency and Costs Case Processing Time Court Caseload Impact Justice System Cost Impact and Program Costs Conclusion Endnotes Chapter 5: Major Issues Confronting the Community Mediation Field Ensuring Quality Control in Dispute Resolution Services The Debate Regarding Qualifications Ethical Standards of Conduct The Challenge of Obtaining and Maintaining Adequate Funding Support Developing Working Relationships with the Local Police Police Referrals to Mediation Programs Assisting in Police/Community Problem-Solving Efforts Delivering Conflict Management Skills Training to Police Personnel Turf Concerns: The Ebb and Flow of Collaboration and Competition for Markets Concerns Regarding the Appropriateness of Certain Types of Cases for Mediation/Arbitration Cross-Cultural and Gender Issues in Mediation Increasing International Dimensions of the Mediation Field Conclusion Endnotes Chapter 6: Observations Regarding the Current Status of the Community Mediation Field The Current State of the Field Areas In Which Initial Expectations Were Exceeded The Field Has Survived and the Number of Programs Has Grown Dramatically Programs Have Markedly Diversified the Range of Their Services Impressive State-Level Support Mechanisms for Programs Have Emerged Nonprofit Community Mediation Programs Are Increasingly Prevalent Comparative Research Findings Regarding Dispute Resolution Processes Are Impressive The Field Has Increasing International Dimensions Areas In Which Expectations Were Not Exceeded Public Awareness of Community Mediation Continues To Be Relatively Low Funding for Individual Programs Continues To Be Low and Precarious Program Caseloads Are Lower Than Initially Expected and Impacts on Justice System Caseloads Are Lower Than Anticipated Programs Tend To Be Concentrated in a Relatively Small Number of States Needs for the Community Mediation Field in the Coming Years The Need for Increased Public Education Regarding Community Mediation The Need for Increased Program Funding The Need for Improving Intake and Referral Mechanisms and Increasing Caseloads The Need for Enhanced Training of Program Directors The Need for Further Research to Improve Understanding of Program Processes and Outcomes The Need for Additional Attention to Underserved States Conclusion Endnotes Exhibits Exhibit 1: Community Mediation Programs: Number of Programs Begun per Year Since 1969 Exhibit 2: Community Mediation Programs: Growth in Numbers of Programs Exhibit 3: Community Mediation Programs: Distribution of Numbers of Staff Exhibit 4: Community Mediation Programs: Distribution of Numbers of Volunteer Mediators Exhibit 5: Community Mediation Programs: Distribution by Size of Annual Budget Exhibit 6: Dispute Resolution Rates for Five Florida Mediation Programs Exhibit 7: Percentages of Defendants Paying Settlements in Maine Small Claims Cases Exhibit 8: Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators Appendixes Appendix A: Sources of Additional Information Regarding Dispute Resolution Mechanisms Appendix B: Selected Resources for Community Mediation Programs Appendix C: Research Questions Requiring Attention ------------------------------ Attorney General's Foreword Some amount of conflict is inevitable in every society. The key question is how that conflict gets resolved. America's community mediation programs provide an important piece of the answer in this country. Through community mediation programs, we can help each other build and strengthen our communities and neighborhoods by working to help individuals and communities solve their own problems and resolve their own disputes. As this report, Community Mediation Programs: Development and Challenges, describes, America's community mediation programs have effectively resolved conflicts of all sorts-ranging from everyday disputes among neighbors, relatives and acquaintances, to potentially violent conflicts between youth gangs, to significant public policy issues within communities. These mediation efforts also continue to bring conflict resolution education into our schools. Community mediation programs can achieve these promising results by involving the community itself. Through trained volunteers giving their time, energy and experience, community mediation works to make communities better places. The Department of Justice has been involved in the community mediation movement since its early days. We are releasing this report to encourage communities across the country to develop new programs and refine existing ones. I hope this can be a useful tool to learn from each others' experiences and to encourage creative thinking about how to meet citizen needs for rapid, accessible and effective dispute resolution. The growth of community mediation programs shows how good things can happen when we combine local initiative, volunteerism, and common sense to deal with pressing national problems. Janet Reno Attorney General ------------------------------ Foreword From modest beginnings, community mediation programs have spread widely across the nation. They have been shaped by the energy of thousands of dedicated program staff members and volunteer mediators. Over the years, programs have greatly diversified the range of services that they provide, and numerous national, State, and local institutions have emerged to help support such programs. The National Institute of Justice has been involved with the community mediation field since its inception in the 1970s. In 1977, the National Institute published Neighborhood Justice Centers: An Analysis of Potential Models and also supported the development and evaluation of experimental community mediation programs in Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. Since that time the National Institute has funded a variety of studies dealing with important issues in this field. This report examines developments in the community mediation field over the past two decades and reviews the field's major achievements and ongoing challenges. The evolution of the field, the diversification of services, and major resources available to the field are reviewed. Research findings dealing with community mediation are also examined. Many observers have suggested that the United States faces increasing conflicts in coming years due to growing cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity in the nation and associated tensions; stresses induced by rapid economic change; and related factors. Community mediation programs have an important role to play in helping to prevent and resolve the many interpersonal, intergroup, and public policy disputes that confront our society. Such programs have sought to develop sophisticated, pragmatic mechanisms to take on this idealistic task. The National Institute of Justice hopes that this report can contribute to the development and refinement of community mediation programs. Jeremy Travis Director National Institute of Justice ------------------------------ Acknowledgments The draft version of this report was reviewed by an extremely talented group of leaders in the community mediation field, including: o Mr. Scott Bradley, Executive Director of the Mediation Network of North Carolina; o Mr. Thomas F. Christian, Coordinator of the Community Dispute Resolution Program for the New York State Unified Court System; o Ms. Albie Davis, Director of Mediation for the Massachusetts District Courts; o Mr. Thomas Quinn, Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Justice; and o Ms. Melinda Smith, Executive Director of the New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution. Mr. Bradley and Ms. Smith are also the cochairs of the National Association for Community Mediation. The comments provided by all of these project advisory board members are deeply appreciated. In addition, the National Institute of Justice monitor for this project, Ms. Carolyn Peake, provided extremely valuable assistance and insights throughout the course of work on this report. Her assistance in all phases of this project is greatly appreciated. Other National Institute of Justice personnel, including Ms. Cheryl Crawford and Ms. Virginia Baldau, have also provided very valuable assistance with this project and with work on my earlier NIJ reports dealing with the community mediation field. Also, special thanks to Melissa Brodrick at the Massachusetts Association of Mediation Programs and Practitioners for providing the cover photograph on such short notice. The contributions of a number of my colleagues at Abt Associates in the final production of the report are also deeply appreciated. I have benefited greatly from the superb and patient support I received from Mary- Ellen Perry and Karen Minich, as well as the extra efforts of Jocelyn Page, Jill Kateman, and Angela Allegro, who helped get this report through its final phase. ----------------------------- Preface Community mediation programs have been developed in hundreds of communities across the United States, and their volunteer community mediators grapple with many of their communities' more troubling conflicts. Thomas Fee, a former senior staff member of the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, has noted: Nothing in dispute resolution has been more daring- -and audacious--than the creation of scores of community justice centers. Daring: It took courage to launch on a shoestring a grass-roots imperfectly understood service housed typically in a storefront or low-rent office building. Audacious: It was indeed audacious to claim expertise in helping to settle conflicts when the accepted wisdom was that the folks at the courthouse had a monopoly on dispute resolution. But the daring and audacity of the pioneers who established community justice centers seems to be paying off.[1] This report reviews the evolution of the community mediation field, examines the contributions of innovative dispute settlement programs to the administration of justice, and explores major issues confronting the field. The report's intended audience is diverse and includes community mediation program administrators, program staff members, volunteer community mediators, program planners, legislators, policymakers in other governmental programs that are relevant to the mission of community mediation, and potential community mediation program funders in foundations and government. Chapter 1 explores the history of community mediation programs, factors influencing their growth, the major types of programs in operation, and major trends in the field. Chapter 2 examines the striking diversification of services provided by programs. In Chapter 3, resources for program design, support, and funding at the national, State, and local levels are reviewed. These resources can provide assistance to policymakers and practitioners who are establishing or refining community dispute resolution programs. Chapter 4 examines the impact of programs on the quality of justice and case processing efficiency. Chapter 5 discusses critical issues confronting the community dispute resolution field, including professionalization, funding problems, turf conflicts, debates regarding the purposes of dispute resolution services, and related issues. Chapter 6 presents summary observations regarding the current status of the community mediation field. Major areas in which initial expectations for the field were exceeded and areas in which they were not are reviewed. The chapter then discusses possible measures that national, State, and local leaders can take to address challenges confronting the field. The report's appendixes provide selected resource materials. Information for this report was obtained from a variety of sources, including: (1) a review of the literature in the field, (2) an examination of materials obtained from programs across the country, (3) discussions with experts in the field, and (4) site visits to innovative programs in California, New York, and North Carolina. All three States have been leaders in the community dispute resolution field, and each has a large array of programs. In addition, this report builds on previous research by the author in the dispute resolution field, including the preparation of two earlier reports for the National Institute of Justice. The first, Neighborhood Justice Centers: An Analysis of Potential Models (with Joan Mullen), was prepared in 1977 when the community dispute resolution field was experiencing a very energetic infancy. The National Institute of Justice subsequently sponsored experimental neighborhood justice centers in Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. Community Dispute Resolution Programs and Public Policy was prepared in 1986 and examined roughly a decade of program experience across the nation. This report examines more than two decades of experience with community mediation programs. It seeks to chronicle the many remarkable developments in the field and to examine program accomplishments and continuing problems. Program developments are placed in the context of the ongoing evolution of the larger dispute resolution movement in the United States. Community mediation programs have contributed much to the administration of justice, and, as is shown in the following pages, many programs continue to demonstrate the daring and audacity that characterized the field's inception. Endnotes 1. Thomas Fee, NIDR Forum (December 1988). ------------------------------ Executive Summary Over the past 20 years, hundreds of community mediation programs have emerged across the nation. These programs seek to resolve disputes between individuals and, at times, between groups and organizations, through the use of mediation and related dispute resolution techniques. The programs' community mediators are typically local volunteers who are trained to resolve conflicts. Community Mediation Programs: Developments and Challenges provides a discussion of developments in the community mediation field and examines program achievements and problems. The publication is intended for program directors, their staff members, and mediators; program planners from justice system agencies, government, and private organizations; legislators and foundation personnel who may fund programs; and any others who have an interest in strategies for resolving conflict in society. Overview of Developments Chapter 1 provides a brief history of the evolution of the community mediation field and examines factors influencing the field's growth. The major types of community mediation programs (government versus privately sponsored) are examined, as are the predominant dispute resolution techniques used: conciliation, mediation, arbitration, and facilitation. Information is provided regarding program characteristics such as staffing, mediators, and budgets. Major trends in the community mediation field are reviewed, including diversification, specialization, replication in institutional settings, the expanded role of programs in handling public disputes and intergroup conflicts, increased concerns with quality control and qualifications, and institutionalization. Diversification of Dispute Resolution Services In recent years, community mediation programs have greatly expanded the range of cases they handle. Chapter 2 reviews the broad array of services provided by community mediation programs. Areas of practice examined include criminal case processing, civil case processing, school-based dispute resolution, domestic relations and custody dispute resolution, intergroup conflict resolution, the facilitation of public policy disputes, and victim-offender mediation efforts. Profiles of a number of community mediation programs are provided, and comprehensive statewide dispute resolution system initiatives are noted. Resources for Program Design, Support, and Funding A wide variety of national, State, and local organizations provide valuable support for the development and refinement of community mediation programs. Chapter 3 reviews the resources that have emerged. Major national organizations that are supporting the field include the National Association for Community Mediation, the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution, and many others. Numerous State associations of private and government programs have also emerged. Information is provided regarding major State-level efforts in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, and Ohio. Local programs that provide extensive training and technical assistance nationally are also discussed. The Impact of Programs on the Quality of Justice and Related Measures Many informative studies of the processes and impacts of community mediation programs have been conducted. Chapter 4 reviews major findings regarding the comparative quality of justice delivered by community mediation programs and the courts. Community mediation program case processing is typically viewed by disputants as being more favorable than court case processing for comparable matters. Varying levels of compliance with case agreements versus adjudicated judgments are also discussed; compliance rates for mediated small claims cases are markedly higher than for comparable adjudicated cases. This chapter also examines program impacts on case processing time, court caseloads, and court costs. For the most part, programs do not appear to have had a significant impact on court caseloads or costs. Major Issues Confronting the Community Mediation Field As would be expected in any vital area of endeavor, the community mediation field is confronting an array of important issues that require attention. Topics that are examined in Chapter 5 include techniques for ensuring quality control in dispute resolution services, ethical standards of conduct for mediators, the challenge of obtaining and maintaining adequate program funding support, strategies for developing working relationships with the local police, turf concerns among programs, concerns regarding the appropriateness of certain types of cases for mediation, cross-cultural and gender issues in mediation, and the increasing international dimensions of the field. Observations Regarding the Current Status of the Community Mediation Field This report closes with an effort to extract from the broad array of observations presented a general understanding of the community mediation field's current status--both its major achievements and its problems. Based on this analysis, the report reviews next steps that major participants in the field--including leaders of national and State organizations, mediation program directors, and volunteer mediators--may wish to consider. Areas in which the field exceeded common initial expectations of observers are reviewed, including the degree of program growth, diversification, the emergence of State-level support mechanisms, and other issues. Areas in which the field did not exceed expectations are also explored, including the relatively low public awareness of the field, the relatively low and precarious funding of many programs, the relatively low caseloads of programs, and the concentration of programs in a relatively small number of States. The chapter closes with a discussion of recommended measures to address the various problems confronting the field. ------------------------------ Chapter 1 An Overview of Developments in the Community Mediation Field ------------------------------ Key Points o Community mediation programs have spread widely over the past two decades and serve citizens in hundreds of communities across the nation. o Many factors have influenced the evolution of community mediation programs, including: - growing concern with limits on access to justice arising from court case backlog, delay, and costs; - the reduced role of traditional informal dispute resolvers (such as extended families) due to increased mobility and urbanization; - changing perceptions regarding the appropriateness and effectiveness of court case processing versus alternative dispute processing methods; and - increased interest in the role of community members in resolving conflicts. o Community mediation programs are typically sponsored by nonprofit organizations, although some justice system agencies and city governments also sponsor such programs. o Programs often provide a range of dispute resolution services, including conciliation, mediation, arbitration, and the facilitation of meetings dealing with public policy issues. (Each of these dispute resolution techniques is reviewed in this chapter.) o Major trends in the field include: - the diversification of program caseloads; - the replication of dispute mechanisms in institutional settings; - the use of community mediation programs as training resources; and - an expanded role in handling public disputes and intergroup conflicts. ------------------------------ The Significance of Community Mediation Programs for the Restorative Justice Movement "Restorative justice" is a philosophy for the delivery of justice that seeks to address the harms to victims, the community, and offenders arising from crime (in contrast to traditional "retributive justice," which focuses simply upon adjudicating and punishing offenders). A variety of books and articles have recently appeared on the topic. The restorative justice philosophy has many manifestations in practice, and community dispute resolution efforts represent one prominent approach embodying restorative justice principles. Many additional justice system innovations that have been implemented during the past two decades have restorative justice features. Examples of restorative justice measures include: (1) restitution using a variety of approaches (including community reparations boards; Vermont has a network of 14 such boards); (2) community service; (3) a range of correctional practices focused on restoring the offender to the community, such as the Genesee, New York, "community sponsors" effort; (4) postadjudication victim-offender reconciliation programs; and (5) victim impact statement mechanisms. A number of jurisdictions and agencies are seeking to develop integrated approaches to restorative justice (for example, the Minnesota Department of Corrections, the Vermont Department of Corrections, and the Genesee County, New York, Sheriff's Department). ------------------------------ Neighborhood Justice Centers: Where Are They Now? The three experimental neighborhood justice centers that were developed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1978 continue in operation after almost two decades. The changes they have experienced over the years closely mirror the evolution of the community mediation field. The Neighborhood Justice Center of Atlanta has changed its name to the Justice Center of Atlanta in order to reflect its increasingly broad mission in Atlanta and nationally. Since its founding, the center has handled more than 40,000 cases and reports a settlement rate of 70 percent for those cases proceeding to mediation hearings. The center originally focused on the mediation of criminal and civil matters. Over the years, the program has added binding and nonbinding arbitration services, group facilitation, the development of school-based peer mediation, conflict resolution training, technical assistance, and related services. The center now has approximately 150 mediators. The Neighborhood Justice Center of Venice/Mar Vista in Los Angeles was sponsored by the L.A. County Bar Association. The program spurred the growth of a number of related bar programs, and in 1987 the County Bar consolidated all of these services into a separate nonprofit organization, Dispute Resolution Services, Inc. The range of services provided reflects the diversification of programs discussed in chapter 2 and includes: (1) community mediation (community mediation programs are based in communities across Los Angeles, including Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Compton, and Pasadena), (2) court programs (settlement conferences are held for major civil cases), (3) school mediation (this component includes the development of peer mediation programs and student, parent, and teacher training in conflict resolution skills), (4) attorney-client services (this program seeks to help resolve attorney-client fee and nonfee disputes), and (5) training and consultant services. The fifth program provides dispute resolution training and consultation to individuals, governments, social service agencies, corporations, and others. The overall Dispute Resolution Services program budget is now $1.3 million. The Kansas City (Missouri) Neighborhood Justice Center was established within the Human Relations Department of the city government in 1978. The program was taken over by the city in January 1981 when Federal funding ended, and it continues in operation as the Human Relations Department's Dispute Resolution Program. The program continues to offer many of the same services it provided when it was first founded, including conciliation, mediation, case referral, and training. Cases are referred to the program by the police, the municipal court, the schools, and government agencies, and the program has liaisons assigned to its various referral sources to encourage referrals. The Kansas City program reports that it has resolved more than 15,000 disputes since its inception. The fact that the three programs continue to exist defies many of the predictions of observers in the late 1970s who considered community mediation a fad; not only have the programs continued to exist, they also have grown and have helped to devise innovative ways for handling an increasingly broad range of conflicts. ------------------------------ NAFCM Summary of Community Mediation Characteristics Community mediation is characterized by or committed to: o using trained community volunteers as the primary providers of mediation services. Volunteers are not required to have academic or professional credentials. o being a private nonprofit or public agency, or program thereof, with a governing/advisory board; o using mediators, staff, and governing/advisory boards who represent the diversity of the community served; o providing direct access to the public through self-referral and striving to reduce barriers to service, including physical, linguistic, cultural, programmatic, and economic barriers; o providing service to clients regardless of their ability to pay; o initiating, facilitating, and educating for collaborative community relationships to effect positive systematic change; o engaging in public awareness campaigns and educational activities about the values and practices of mediation; o providing a forum for dispute resolution at the earliest stage of conflict; and o providing an alternative to the judicial system at any stage of a conflict. ------------------------------ Mediation: A Case Example The mediation hearing described here occurred at the San Francisco Community Board Program, but the type of dispute is representative of those seen at many programs across the country. The case involved two next-door neighbors. The presenting complaint was an assault and battery. The complainant (let's call him Mr. Janaslav) had been in a fight with the respondent (Mr. Valdez), and Mr. Valdez had seized a board from Mr. Janaslav's hands and swung it, breaking Mr. Janaslav's arm. Both men were in their forties. When Mr. Janaslav went to the district attorney's office to swear out a complaint, he told the prosecutor about the dispute's complex history. The prosecutor immediately referred the case to the local mediation program, having found such cases to be inappropriate for adjudication in the past. The program scheduled a hearing a few days later. The hearing was held in the evening at a daycare center, and both extended families attended. Both the complainant and the respondent presented their views to the mediators, and it became clear that the core of the dispute was really over the complainant's driveway being blocked repeatedly. The Valdez family had five cars, and one of them always seemed to be blocking the Janaslav driveway. Mr. Janaslav's mother lived with him and had to be rushed to the hospital often on short notice for a lung condition. A previous fight over the driveway blocking had resulted in Mr. Janaslav's being punched in the nose and retreating to his garage. Since that time, Mr. Janaslav reported, the neighboring Valdez children always gave him the "evil eye" as if he were a coward. The Valdez family retorted that Mr. Janaslav was a belligerent person who was always pointlessly harassing them. The five-person mediation panel guided the discussion of the controversy and attempted to help define the issues at hand. In the early phase of the discussion, the potential for future escalation of the dispute became very clear. Mr. Janaslav (sitting there with his arm in a cast and sling) noted that he had a knife at home, and if he was threatened again, he didn't know what he would do. As the discussion continued, a comment was made that seemed to be a turning point: Mr. Janaslav and Mr. Valdez were both arguing, and Mr. Janaslav said, "Look, I'm afraid of you people. You have more men in your household. I'm scared." The Valdez family members seemed genuinely taken aback that they frightened Mr. Janaslav, since they thought that he was an ogre. The idea that he was actually feeling defensive and that he had the courage to say so changed the discussion. The Valdez family members cautiously began to apologize, and conversation started to turn toward possible solutions to the controversy. Mr. Valdez offered to paint the curb a foot and a half on either side of the driveway. If a Valdez car ever extended over that point, then Mr. Janaslav was to tell Mr. Valdez, and the car would be moved. Mr. Valdez said the communication should be between the two heads of the households because "men understand these things better." The women of the two families agreed to the plan. The mediation panelists swallowed hard- they clearly did not share the views of the two families that "men understand these things better," yet they remained nonjudgmental to make the agreement work. The program reported that the agreement was successful; the families reported that the problem was solved. It is useful to picture what would have happened had the prosecutor accepted this particular case. Either it would have been dismissed (perhaps due to the complainant's frustration with continuances), or it would have reached trial and a verdict. The trial would have dealt with the narrow issue of the assault and battery. The other issues that animated the dispute would have been irrelevant and inadmissible for the most part. Communication would have taken place through professional intermediaries, and the court could either find innocence (angering Janaslav further) or guilt (enraging the Valdez family). The kids would still give Janaslav the "evil eye," making his daily life miserable; the driveway would still be intermittently blocked; the two families would continue to live an uncomfortable existence. And the dispute might escalate. Only a few weeks before this fight occurred, a person was shot by his neighbor in San Francisco over a recurrent dispute about a blocked driveway. A brief look at crime data indicates the magnitude of the problem. A substantial proportion of American homicides are not television's stereotyped stranger-to-stranger offenses. They are husbands killing wives, relatives killing relatives, neighbors shooting neighbors. The issues involved are rarely more glorious than a blocked driveway. The Vera Institute of Justice study of felonies in New York notes that "because our society has not found adequate alternatives to arrest and adjudication for coping with interpersonal anger publicly expressed, we pay a price." The price includes court congestion, high dismissal rates, and ineffective dispute resolution. The Vera researchers recommended experimentation with mediation projects to handle many types of cases.[10] ------------------------------ The Debate Over the Transformative Power of Mediation A provocative debate has emerged in the dispute resolution field about the central purposes of mediation. Varying philosophies regarding mediation have existed for many years, but Bush and Folger have brought the issues into focus and stimulated a lively debate with the publication in 1994 of their influential book entitled The Promise of Mediation. Bush and Folger state that four different understandings of mediation have emerged. They have distinguished four "stories" used to account for the mediation movement; (1) the satisfaction story, (2) the social justice story, (3) the oppression story, and (4) the transformation story. These different approaches lead to different styles of mediation. The satisfaction story explanation of mediation focuses on the ability of mediation to satisfy disputant needs by enabling them to discuss the full dimensions of the conflict. This approach emphasizes that mediation can result in win-win solutions and "can facilitate collaborative, integrative problem solving rather than adversarial, distributive bargaining."[13] In addition, proponents of this approach emphasize that mediation can reduce the economic and social costs of dispute resolution to disputants when compared with court case processing and can reduce related burdens on the courts' caseloads and budgets. The social justice story of mediation focuses on the potential role of mediation in helping to organize and empower communities. According to this story, mediation can reduce individuals' dependency on government institutions, help them to take control of their lives, and ultimately help people to focus on common interests. This approach has been emphasized by some prominent proponents of a community-based emphasis, including Ray Shonholtz, former director of the San Francisco Community Board Program. The oppression story emphasizes that mediation may have the opposite impact hoped for by some community-based mediation advocates and instead disempower people by reducing their recourse to legal rights and opening them up to manipulation by the powerful. According to this interpretation, mediation may undermine the gains arising from the civil rights, women's, and consumers' movements. This viewpoint is examined at length in chapter 5. The transformation story discussed by Bush and Folger emphasizes that mediation can transform the parties to the dispute by enhancing their understanding of the other party and their capacity for compassion and empathy, and also by empowering them as individuals to handle their own conflicts directly. Bush and Folger note that from the transformative perspective, "the goal is a world in which people are not just better off but better: more human and more humane."[14] They argue that the transformation story, in fact, is the goal that motivates many volunteers to serve as mediators in the first place-the notion that mediation has the power to improve people's approach to social interaction. Bush and Folger indicate that the satisfaction story dominates the mediation field, resulting in an emphasis on achieving settlements without particular regard for the transformative potential of mediation. It is clear that advocates of these four different philosophies have different prescriptions for the conduct of mediation. Satisfaction proponents emphasize achieving settlements, social justice proponents emphasize a recognition of the community empowerment dimensions of mediation, transformation advocates focus on the potential of mediation for the personal growth of the disputants, and oppression proponents simply argue against the use of mediation as a dispute resolution mechanism for many types of conflict. The types of hearing officers used, the length of hearings, the types of issues addressed, and related features could all vary as a function of the view of mediation being emphasized. For example, brief hearings focused on the specific interests of the parties could suffice for many instances if satisfaction is the goal. Lengthier or repeated hearings emphasizing the human dimensions of the conflict for both parties would be required in the transformative (more therapeutic) approach. The Promise of Mediation has been reviewed widely in community dispute resolution publications and internal program reports. For example, the 1994-95 Annual Report of the Orange County Dispute Settlement Center begins with the question, "Can Mediation Transform Us?" on its cover. The program director, Frances Wright Henderson, states in her cover article that, Many mediation theorists are now embracing the transformative orientation to conflict based on the book The Promise of Mediation. . . . This theory sees conflict as a potential occasion for growth, in two dimensions: first, through strengthening the self through deliberate reflection, choice, and action; and second, through reaching beyond the self to relate to others.[15] Henderson reports that transformative moments are often observed in hearings at her program. Many additional observers see great potential in the transformative perspective. For example, Robert Sherman, a program officer at the Surdna Foundation, has noted that by "viewing participation in the process of mediation as personally transformative for both clients and professionals [Bush and Folger] help move somewhat tired discussions of 'skills' and 'attitudes toward conflict' toward a more radical and transformative view of best practice outcomes. This new intellectual framework has the potential to redirect and energize theory-building and practice in many sectors of the dispute resolution movement."[16] ------------------------------ Over the past two decades, community mediation programs have spread widely across the United States. These programs seek to resolve disputes between individuals and, at times, between groups and organizations through the use of mediation and related dispute resolution techniques. Programs also typically seek to improve understanding between disputants. The programs' mediators are typically volunteer community members who are trained to resolve conflicts. Community mediation programs provide disputants with the opportunity to state their concerns and then seek to assist them in arriving at a mutually agreeable settlement of the conflict. In recent years, community mediation programs have significantly expanded the range of types of disputes that they address and have also assisted schools, businesses, and other organizations to develop in-house dispute resolution mechanisms. In addition, they have begun to encourage ways to avoid disputes in the first place through the teaching of conflict resolution skills in schools and other settings. Specialized dispute resolution mechanisms have also been developed for the resolution of divorce-related matters, consumer disputes, landlord/tenant conflicts, parent/child disputes, major civil cases, and many other types of controversy. Community mediation programs are playing a significant role in the administration of justice, and interesting new experimental approaches to community justice and related forms of dispute resolution are being developed across the nation. This report chronicles the growth and diversification of this important field, examines strategies being used to implement and institutionalize programs, assesses the impact of programs on disputants and the administration of justice, and examines major issues currently confronting the field. A Brief History of the Evolution of Community Mediation Programs Courts in the United States have long struggled to deal effectively with minor criminal cases involving neighbors, relatives, and acquaintances. Such cases often involve charges of harassment, minor assaults, fraudulent financial dealings, and the like. Prosecutors, court clerks, and judges have typically found such cases to be frustrating, no-win experiences. It is usually difficult to tell who is telling the truth, emotions between parties to the disputes typically run high, and traditional sanctions-fines and incarceration-do not provide much hope of resolving the matters. In fact, such sanctions can simply exacerbate the disputes, resulting in escalation of the conflict and in the court's further involvement in another more serious round of complaints. In short, courts were often viewed as ineffective in dealing with such cases and yet were forced to handle them because alternative forums for resolving them were not readily available. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of experimental programs were developed to deal with such minor criminal cases more effectively. The Philadelphia Municipal Court Arbitration Tribunal was perhaps the first to test alternative ways of handling such disputes. This program was developed in 1969 through the joint efforts of the American Arbitration Association, the Philadelphia District Attorney, and the Municipal Court. Disputants were offered the option of binding arbitration for their cases. The Columbus, Ohio, City Prosecutor's Office developed a similar program during the same period. Unlike the Philadelphia program, the Columbus program provided disputants with the option of having their cases mediated rather than arbitrated. The first mediators used by the project were local law professors, and as the program expanded, law students were trained to serve as mediators. These two initial programs became models for other programs across the nation and stimulated the creation of different experimental approaches. The Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution (IMCR) Dispute Center began operation in Manhattan in the early 1970s and provided training for many other programs. George Nicolau of IMCR encouraged programs to have a diverse spectrum of community members to serve as mediators. Other prominent early programs included the Dorchester (Boston) Urban Court Program, the Rochester (New York) Community Dispute Services Project, and the San Francisco Community Board Program. The community mediation field grew rapidly during the late 1970s and early 1980s, spurred on initially by the availability of Federal funding from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and subsequently by funding from foundations and State and local governments. Many organizations, including the American Bar Association, the American Arbitration Association, the Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution, and the U.S. Department of Justice's Community Relations Service and National Institute of Justice, provided national leadership during this period to encourage the growth of programs. The Justice Department's experimental neighborhood justice centers in Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles were evaluated in detail and provided further models for replication.[1] The community mediation field has continued to grow rapidly during the past decade. A recent report prepared for the Massachusetts Supreme Court regarded alternative dispute resolution mechanisms as follows: "What began as an isolated phenomenon twenty years ago has in recent years become an expectation, and, according to some views, a right."[2] Some States have moved vigorously to meet such expectations. For example, the New York State Court System's Community Dispute Resolution Centers Program now funds programs in all of the State's 62 counties, and these programs served more than 100,000 people in 1995. Exhibit 1 uses data from American Bar Association (ABA) directories of programs and from the recent National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM) program directory to present a summary of the annual numbers of mediation programs that have been established.[3] Community mediation programs included in this exhibit handle a diverse caseload of minor civil and criminal cases. The exhibit does not provide an exhaustive count of community mediation programs because the directories do not include all programs in the nation. In addition, programs that specialize in the handling of only one type of dispute are not included (for example, family mediation, landlord/tenant mediation, consumer mediation, court-annexed arbitration, labor mediation, and other specialized efforts). Community mediation programs are defined, for the purposes of this study, as mediation services that process diverse caseloads of disputes. The States with the largest numbers of community mediation programs are New York, Michigan, North Carolina, Massachusetts, California, Florida, Ohio, Texas, and New Jersey. Exhibit 2 shows the growth of community mediation programs across the nation by presenting the data from the ABA and NAFCM directories. In recent years, community mediation programs have dramatically increased the range of services that they provide. Chapter 2 examines the diversification of dispute resolution services delivered, including minor criminal case processing, minor civil case processing, school- based dispute resolution, divorce/custody dispute resolution, intergroup dispute resolution, public policy dispute resolution mechanisms, victim- offender mediation efforts, and other specialized services. This diversification has enabled programs to serve a far broader range of disputants than was previously possible and also provides for a more diversified revenue base, which can be critical in sustaining program operations. Interest in the field is widespread, and every State bar association has developed an alternative dispute resolution committee to foster the growth of such programs. In addition to the hundreds of programs serving State courts, more than 75 alternative dispute resolution programs have been implemented in the Federal district courts. Victim-offender mediation projects are an interesting program variant; they use mediation to provide a form of "restorative justice" between crime victims and offenders. In contrast to community mediation programs that primarily deal with conflicts among acquaintances, these programs often mediate between strangers. Among other things, they typically seek to arrange restitution to the victim and also seek to enhance the offender's understanding of the consequences of the offense. Participation in mediation sessions is at the discretion of the victim, and many victims are not only interested in arranging restitution but also in learning why they were selected for victimization, in venting their anger regarding the crime, and in seeing whether the offender appears to feel any remorse. Early developments in such programs were chronicled in the 1986 National Institute of Justice Issues and Practices Report entitled Crime Victim Restitution: An Analysis of Approaches. Mark Umbreit, an expert on such programs, has recently published an evaluation of their impact in California, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Texas.[4] Mediation and arbitration approaches for the handling of major civil cases have also spread rapidly in recent years. A broad panoply of civil justice dispute resolution reforms are being implemented across the nation, including mechanisms for resolving major civil cases (such as minitrials, private judging programs, summary jury trials, consumer mediation mechanisms, tort case evaluation programs, the full range of arbitration efforts, landlord/tenant projects, divorce mediation, and others). Major alternative dispute resolution initiatives arising from recent Federal legislation (such as, the Civil Justice Reform Act, the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act, and the Negotiated Rule-Making Act) are also playing a significant role in the field. The growth of alternative dispute resolution for the handling of major civil cases illustrates a significant irony in the field. Some early observers of alternative dispute resolution labeled such mechanisms as a form of "second-class justice" for the disadvantaged. The strong demand for such forms of dispute resolution by elite groups now suggests that many highly "advantaged" parties view alternative dispute resolution mechanisms (such as private judging programs and summary jury trials) as first-class approaches for handling their conflicts. Fears about "second-class justice" are justified when there are substantial power disparities between disputants. This issue is discussed in more detail in chapter 5, which considers the appropriateness of certain types of cases for mediation/arbitration. The application of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms to address major civil disputes raises some important questions. For example, are private judging systems and related civil justice approaches leading to a two-tier civil justice system in which wealthy litigants can receive rapid, effective private dispute resolution services on a fee basis while the less wealthy are relegated to increasingly overburdened courts? Factors Influencing the Evolution of Community Mediation Programs A variety of factors have contributed to the growth and evolution of community mediation programs. (Major factors discussed here are not presented in rank order of importance.) A Growing Concern With Limits on Access to Justice Arising From Court Case Backlog, Delay, and Costs Numerous major commissions have documented the problems of backlog, delay, and costs confronting the U.S. courts. These problems have been chronic in the courts; the analyses of court problems by the Wickersham Commission in 1923 were remarkably similar in many respects to those of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice in the late 1960s and to more recent academic studies of the problems confronting the courts. The recognition of these problems has spurred the development of innovative approaches for handling court cases. The particularly troublesome problems with the processing of minor criminal matters among acquaintances were noted previously in the discussion of the Philadelphia and Columbus dispute resolution programs. The Reduced Role of Traditional Informal Dispute Resolvers (Such As Extended Families) Due to Increased Mobility and Urbanization A second factor encouraging the development of innovative dispute resolution mechanisms has been the recognition of the reduced role of traditional dispute resolvers in the United States. The high level of mobility, urbanization, and anonymity of citizens in twentieth-century America results in disputants rarely having common "mediating" institutions to help them resolve their disputes. Extended families, churches, neighborhood groups, and other organizations traditionally provided a source of indigenous dispute resolvers who could intervene between disputing members and seek to resolve the conflict. Such dispute resolvers still exist in some settings but are far less common in a society in which relatives often live hundreds of miles apart, longtime neighbors often do not even know each other's names, and the role of many civic groups is waning. Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard University has discussed this phenomenon at length in a recent article and notes that even bowling leagues are on the wane in favor of individual bowling.[5] He notes that families in which both the husband and wife must work in order to make ends meet and in which many people find it necessary to hold more than one job inhibit the level of civic participation of an earlier era. In such a setting, families become more and more isolated, and traditional "mediating" organizations disappear. By contrast, a number of cultures employ informal mediation by citizens at the core of their dispute resolution processes. Chief Justice Robert Yazzie of the Navajo Nation Courts has discussed how Native American tribes have long used mediation to resolve conflicts among members.[6] Manu Meyers (a native Hawaiian) and Albie Davis have provided a very interesting discussion of traditional Hawaiian dispute resolution approaches and have contrasted them with those routinely used elsewhere in the United States. Additional fascinating reviews of Native American practices are presented in the NIDR Forum issue on "Conflict Resolution in Native Justice Traditions" and in the Judicature issue on "Indian Tribal Courts and Justice."[7] Changing Perceptions Regarding the Appropriateness and Effectiveness of Court Case Processing versus Alternative Dispute Processing Methods Many observers have concluded that court case processing is simply not suitable for certain types of disputes. Minor disputes among parties that have an ongoing relationship are often viewed as particularly inappropriate. The process of turning the case over to attorneys (along with restrictive rules of evidence) makes it virtually impossible for the parties to work together to arrive at a common understanding of the problem and potential solutions. Instead, court case handling often polarizes and escalates the conflict. Out-of-court settlements that may be reached are typically coerced through threats of adverse court action rather than sought in a win-win spirit. In addition to shortcomings of the court process, the options available to judges for disposing of cases are often inadequate in cases between parties having an ongoing relationship. In many cases, one of the parties simply desires an apology from the other party and a promise not to repeat the behavior that was offensive. Obviously, the judge does not have the power to compel a sincere apology. Instead, judges are limited in criminal matters to the imposition of fines or incarceration-sanctions that are appropriate for serious offenses but that are relatively blunt instruments for resolving interpersonal conflicts. The recognition of these shortcomings in court processes and potential outcomes has led policymakers to explore the use of innovative dispute resolution approaches, particularly various forms of mediation. Mediation allows parties to confront one another directly without the need for attorneys as intermediaries. The focus of mediation is on understanding the point of view of the other side and then seeking a mutually agreeable resolution to the dispute. Studies reviewed in chapter 4 indicate that disputants are typically more satisfied with mediated outcomes than with court dispositions and that the durability of case resolutions is often superior. An Increased Interest in the Role of Community Members in Resolving Conflicts Another significant stimulus to the mediation movement has been the interest in empowering community members to resolve their own conflicts. The San Francisco Community Board Program was perhaps the first major proponent of this position and initially placed great emphasis on the empowering quality of mediation. Ray Shonholtz, the founder of the Community Board Program, suggested that community-based conflict resolution programs could provide a cadre of leaders who could not only help resolve interpersonal disputes but also address larger problems facing the community (such as racial tensions and inadequate city services). This concept is discussed at length later in this report. The Ebb and Flow of Federal and Foundation Funding to Support Innovations and the Transition to Local Funding Support An additional influence on the growth of community mediation programs across the nation has been the availability of funding from the Federal government, foundations, and, ultimately, State and local sources. Funding from the Federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration provided seed money for many community mediation programs in the late 1970s. The Ford Foundation and other private institutions helped many programs to get off the ground. Over time, State legislatures began to appropriate funds for community dispute resolution centers and to authorize higher court filing fees to support such programs. Local city and county governments have also provided funding. The variety of approaches to program funding are examined in chapter 5. The Role of National, State, and Local Organizations in Fostering or Inhibiting Program Growth A number of organizations have played a key role in the spread of community mediation programs. The American Bar Association was an early important force in the field. The ABA's Special Committee on Resolution of Minor Disputes was developed in 1979 and served as an early clearinghouse for developments in the dispute resolution field. The Special Committee developed a directory of community mediation programs across the nation, encouraged State and local bar associations to develop local community mediation programs and supporting legislation, sponsored conferences in the topic area, and fostered the delivery of technical assistance from existing programs to program developers in other jurisdictions. The Special Committee evolved to become the Standing Committee on Dispute Resolution and, now, the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution, with 25 separate committees and approximately 6,000 members. The U.S. Department of Justice has also played a significant role in the growth of the dispute resolution field over the years. The Community Relations Service has developed mechanisms to resolve intergroup conflicts and has also provided valuable technical assistance to many community mediation centers. The Justice Department's Community Relations Service has played an important role in encouraging community mediation program development and in training mediators. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), of the U.S. Justice Department, has had a long-standing interest in assessing community dispute resolution mechanisms and their role in the administration of justice. NIJ designed and funded the neighborhood justice centers demonstration programs in Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles and commissioned extensive evaluations of these programs. A sidebar discusses the current status of the three neighborhood justice centers that were developed almost 20 years ago; their evolution mirrors major trends in the field. In addition, two previous NIJ documents chronicled developments in this area and examined the accomplishments and problems of community mediation programs. The first report, Neighborhood Justice Centers: An Analysis of Potential Models, was published in 1977 at the outset of the American dispute resolution movement. The second report was published in 1986 and examined the many developments and research findings of the field's first decade. The American Arbitration Association, the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, the National Association for Mediation in Education, the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution, and, most recently, the National Association for Community Mediation have also played major roles in the evolution of the field. Their efforts are discussed at various points later in this report. At the State level, associations of community mediation programs and governmental organizations charged with fostering the growth of community mediation have had an important impact on the field. Chapter 3 provides detailed case studies of the work of such State-level organizations in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, and Ohio. Many local mediation programs have also fostered the growth of the community mediation field. Some programs have pioneered dispute resolution procedures and then have worked to encourage the development of programs elsewhere through training and technical assistance. Chapter 3 includes a discussion of some leading programs and their efforts in this regard. A number of religious groups also played an important role in the growth of community mediation programs. The American Friends Service Committee of the Quakers published a newsletter and provided technical assistance to the field through the efforts of Paul Wahrhaftig. The Mennonite Central Committee was also active in encouraging program development. Ronald Kraybill of the Mennonites provided technical assistance and spoke widely on the topic of community mediation. Feminist groups have also taken an interest in the community mediation movement, and some observers have stressed that feminist values are embodied in the consensual dispute resolution processes used by community mediation programs. Feminist groups have made a major contribution to the field by raising serious questions regarding the appropriateness of mediation for domestic violence cases and related cases in which marked power disparities occur between disputants. These important issues are addressed in detail in chapter 5. Major Types of Community Mediation Programs Community mediation programs vary considerably across locales depending on local conditions, program philosophies, funding opportunities, and related factors. Programs do not lend themselves to ready categorization, but two basic types of project structures and goals exist: government- sponsored programs and community-based programs. The general characteristics of the two approaches are discussed here briefly, and specific examples of programs are provided at various points throughout this report. Government-Sponsored Mediation Programs Government-sponsored mediation programs are publicly funded and typically operated by justice system agencies ranging from police departments to prosecutors' offices to the courts. Some city governments sponsor mediation programs in relevant city departments (for example, the Kansas City Dispute Resolution Program is sponsored by that city's Human Relations Department). Furthermore, some victim-offender mediation programs are operated by correctional agencies. The staff members of justice system-based dispute resolution programs are typically employees of the justice system, but the programs' mediators are usually volunteers drawn from the community and trained in conflict resolution skills. Chapter 5 provides a detailed discussion of procedures used by various types of programs for community mediator selection, training, and supervision. Justice system-based programs usually receive the bulk of their referrals from their sponsoring justice system agency and may send disputants letters on official letterhead urging them to participate in a mediation hearing. Such letters vary in the strength of the language used to encourage program participation, with some suggesting that charges may be brought against the respondent (defendant) for the issue in conflict unless both parties attend a hearing sponsored by the dispute resolution program. Justice system- based programs typically have their offices in public buildings operated by the sponsoring agencies. The aims of justice system-based programs typically include: (1) diverting cases from the court caseload, (2) providing a more appropriate process for selected types of cases, (3) providing more efficient and accessible services to citizens, (4) reducing case processing costs to the justice system, and (5) improving citizen satisfaction with the justice system. Representative examples of justice system-based programs include the Jacksonville, Florida, Citizens' Dispute Settlement Program sponsored by the State Attorney's Office, and the Toledo, Ohio, Citizens' Dispute Settlement Program sponsored by the Toledo Municipal Court. Community-Based Mediation Programs Community-based mediation programs are typically sponsored by nonprofit organizations that are formed to provide dispute resolution services. Some churches also sponsor such programs. In addition to seeking to provide a more appropriate and accessible form of dispute resolution, community- based programs often seek to encourage the decentralization of control of decision making, the development of indigenous community leadership, the reduction of community tensions, and related goals. The weight given to specific goals varies across projects and depends on many factors, including the nature of the sponsoring agency, local needs, the philosophy of the specific project director and governing board, and related issues. Community-based programs often seek to obtain a significant portion of their cases directly through walk-ins, in addition to referrals from justice system agencies and other government organizations. Techniques used to obtain cases include distributing fliers describing the project's services, speaking at local meetings, and advertising project availability through posters, billboards, bumper stickers, and public service announcements on television, radio, and other media. Hearings are often held in informal settings (church basements, day-care centers, and similar locales). The San Francisco Community Board Program has been a prominent community-based program for 20 years. Particularly in its early years of operation, the program maintained a very strong community-based philosophy that emphasized not only dispute resolution but also community development and empowerment. Sally Engle Merry and Neal Milner have published a collection of 14 essays that examine problems confronted by the San Francisco Community Board Program in its effort to foster popular justice and empower communities.[8] A number of church-operated programs, such as the Mennonite Conciliation Service of Akron, Pennsylvania, are strongly community-based in philosophy. A number of States that fund community mediation programs (such as New York and Michigan) provide support specifically for community-based projects, and these initiatives are discussed in detail in chapter 3. The States require that grantees be nonprofit organizations (rather than government agencies) and encourage programs to take case referrals from justice system agencies as well as directly from the community. Typical examples of community- based programs include the Orange County (North Carolina) Dispute Settlement Center; the Albany, New York, Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution, Inc., and the Justice Center of Atlanta, Inc. The National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM) has developed a thoughtful list of the characteristics of community mediation that encompasses the features of many government-sponsored and community-based programs; this list is summarized on the following page. Dispute Resolution Mechanisms Community mediation programs use a variety of techniques for processing disputes. The four primary approaches are conciliation, mediation, arbitration, and facilitation. Conciliation Conciliation, as defined in this report, is any effort by a neutral third party to assist in the resolution of a dispute short of bringing the parties together face-to-face for a discussion of the conflict. Such efforts can include holding meetings with individual parties to discuss the controversy and its potential solutions, contacting individual parties by telephone or mail, or performing "shuttle diplomacy" between the parties and serving as a conduit for information between them. Many community mediation programs attempt to settle disputes through telephone or letter contact with the respondent (defendant) prior to the scheduling of a formal hearing. Some specialized dispute resolution programs, such as consumer complaint projects, limit themselves to this approach and inform complainants that they may proceed to other forums if conciliation fails. Other programs view conciliation as only the first available project option, with mediation, arbitration, or both as a sequel if parties do not reach an agreement through conciliation.[9] Mediation Mediation is defined, for the purpose of this report, as an effort by a neutral third party to assist disputing parties to resolve the conflict through the conduct of a face-to-face meeting. In such meetings, the third party is not authorized to impose a settlement on the parties, but rather seeks to assist them in fashioning a mutually satisfactory resolution to the conflict. Different styles of mediation have evolved. Some mediation programs have adopted the labor relations model of mediation, which places less emphasis on the development of relationships between the disputants than some other models. Using this model, mediators may meet with the parties in separate sessions referred to as "caucuses" to seek to determine the parties' bottom lines. The Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution and the American Bar Association conducted the initial training for many early community mediation programs, and their mediation model was grounded in their extensive labor relations experience. Some other mediation programs place heavy emphasis on building relationships between parties. These programs place less emphasis on caucuses because they want the parties to express their positions fully to one another face-to-face. They also seek to enhance the problem-solving skills of the parties so that they can resolve future disputes through direct negotiations, if possible. Approaches to mediation vary on a number of other dimensions as well. Some programs use only one mediator per session; others use two co-mediators, and still others have panels of up to five mediators. One advantage that is often cited for having more than one mediator at a session is that multiple mediators can be selected to represent the range of gender or ethnic diversity of disputants. In addition, co-mediation can provide a valuable training ground for mediators. New mediators can often learn a great deal from experienced mediators regarding how to conduct a mediation session effectively. Programs that lack sufficient referrals to keep their entire pool of mediators busy doing individual mediations can also benefit by using co-mediation to provide mediators with greater opportunities to conduct sessions. Some programs that primarily rely on staff members rather than a larger pool of community mediators to handle mediation sessions tend to conduct relatively brief mediation sessions (approximately one-half hour in length). This approach contrasts sharply with programs that seek to hold quite long mediation sessions (in the two- hour range) that provide time for a detailed examination of issues at hand. Some types of disputes (for example, those involving onetime interactions between the parties rather than ongoing relationships) may not require lengthy mediation sessions. Other conflicts among parties who will be interacting often (as friends, relatives, or acquaintances) may require extensive airing of concerns and complex terms in their agreements to mend the relationship and provide for safeguards against future conflict. Some observers have labeled brief mediation sessions as "drive-by mediation," or "jet lube mediation," and concerns regarding relatively brief mediation sessions need to be taken seriously. Research is needed on the comparative quality of mediation agreements and the impacts on disputants of relatively brief versus longer mediation sessions. For some types of cases, involving complex disputes and longterm relationships, brief sessions are likely to be inadequate. For some others, in which the issues in conflict are simple and no ongoing relationship is contemplated or desired, they may be sufficient. The use of brief sessions across the board can certainly present significant problems for some portion of a program's caseload. Evaluation findings regarding disputant perceptions of the mediation process and the impact of mediation on disputes are discussed at length in chapter 4. One preliminary observation that should be noted here is that the different approaches used by a wide variety of programs tend to result in roughly similar outcomes in terms of the proportion of mediation sessions resulting in agreements, favorable attitudes toward the process by disputants, and related measures. These findings suggest that community mediation can work quite effectively regardless of the specific style of mediation adopted. The common core of all forms of mediation involves the simple opportunity for opposing parties to sit across from one another in a safe, constructive setting established by the mediation program and the mediator. Under such conditions, parties tend to begin to see each other as three-dimensional human beings rather than as abstract opponents and, as a result, may seek to find some common ground regarding their controversy. This alchemy of mediation obviously does not occur in all mediation sessions; sometimes parties are simply too angry, disputes are too entrenched, or one or both parties may not be acting in good faith. But significant progress is made in the majority of mediation sessions. Programs that have experienced success with a specific approach to mediation understandably have often been committed to the position that their approach is the best for others to replicate. Variations in approaches are likely to be superior in certain circumstances. For example, panels of mediators representing the diversity of ethnic characteristics of disputants are likely to be superior when ethnic or racial tensions are at the core of a specific dispute; such diversity can make the parties more comfortable and more confident about the mediation program's impartiality. Additional systematic research is needed to uncover what works best under what conditions. But, for the most part, the core opportunity to humanize opposing disputants and to work constructively to resolve a conflict is offered by all of the various approaches to mediation; this straightforward core feature is likely to be critical to mediation's effectiveness in settling conflicts. Arbitration Arbitration is a dispute resolution process that empowers a neutral third party to impose a settlement upon disputing parties following a hearing between the parties. Arbitrators often seek to mediate a settlement first and impose an arbitrator's award only as a last resort. Programs in which a mediated settlement is conscientiously sought by an arbitrator prior to deciding the matter are referred to as mediation/arbitration or "med/arb" mechanisms. Community dispute resolution projects including programs in New York City and Rochester (developed by the Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution and the American Arbitration Association, respectively) employ arbitration and have the authority to develop binding agreements that are enforceable in the civil courts. These projects typically attempt to mediate the dispute first and resort to arbitration awards only when all attempts at mediation have failed. In such programs, usually only 5 percent of cases processed by the project go on to imposed arbitration; the remaining 95 percent of the cases are mediated, and the mediated agreements are then written up as enforceable consent agreements. As a result, the court becomes a potential key player in such arbitration awards. The procedures used by med/arb programs in New York State were modified in 1991 as a result of a judge's ruling.[11] Programs in New York State using med/arb procedures originally had disputants sign a form consenting to arbitration prior to the beginning of mediation hearings. If a mediation agreement was not reached, the hearing could immediately proceed to arbitration. The judge ruled that a two-step process is required and that parties must sign a separate consent-to-arbitrate form whenever attempts at mediation fail to result in a consensual agreement between the parties. Such a form must "unequivocally state that the parties consent to arbitrate and that they are aware that the arbitrator's decision is final and binding."[12] The vast majority of community mediation programs offer mediation rather than arbitration, and the bulk of this report deals with mediation efforts and their impacts. A major reason for this emphasis is the programs' preference to encourage disputants to settle their case through mutual agreement rather than to impose settlements. Facilitation In addition to using the three traditional dispute resolution techniques, community mediation programs are increasingly becoming involved in the facilitation of meetings dealing with public policy issues. For example, community mediation programs have dealt with such issues as the siting of landfills and the merger of school boards. Specially trained mediation program personnel have conducted public meetings that bring together citizens with representatives of governmental agencies and other relevant organizations to discuss the issues involved in public policy matters affecting the community. Detailed examples of community mediation program efforts at facilitation are presented in chapter 2. Facilitation has numerous features in common with mediation, including the typically neutral role of the third party and the face-to-face discussion of issues between parties. Facilitation meetings are not aimed at the development of written agreements that seek to resolve the conflict between the parties. Instead, facilitations often deal with the design of dispute resolution processes between parties, the development of meeting agendas, and meeting management for large, diverse groups of parties. Program Staffing, Community Mediators, and Program Budgets Program Staffing Community mediation programs vary considerably in the numbers of program staff they have. Exhibit 3 presents a summary of the variations in numbers of program staff reported by the more than 200 programs that are members of the National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM). These data were collected by NAFCM staff and summarized in brief profiles of NAFCM members.[17] The bulk of community mediation programs have relatively small staff sizes. Fifty-six percent of the 208 programs reporting data on staff sizes indicated that they have three or fewer staff members. Forty-two programs report having three staff members. The typical staff configuration for such programs is a project director, an intake and referral specialist, and an administrative/clerical staff member who is responsible for scheduling hearings, answering the telephones, maintaining case files, and related tasks. This pattern can vary depending on the nature of the program. Forty- four programs report having two staff members, and such programs typically have a director and a person who combines the roles of the intake and administrative staff members. Thirty programs report having only one staff member. In such programs, this person is responsible for all of the functions just mentioned. The many problems that can arise from having very small staff sizes are examined at length in chapter 6. Programs with larger numbers of staff members vary in the staff members' job responsibilities and titles depending on the program's activities and emphases. For example, the Orange County Dispute Settlement Center that serves Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina, has eight staff members and they have the following positions: one Executive Director (responsible for program administration, fund- raising, and related tasks); one Assistant to the Director (responsible for a broad range of administrative tasks assigned by the director); two Case Coordinators (responsible for the screening, intake, and scheduling of mediation cases and management of the mediation pool); one Training Coordinator (responsible for mediator training and contracted training services for local governments, businesses, and other organizations); one Youth and Education Coordinator (responsible for school-based mediation program assistance and other conflict management programs for youth); one Public Disputes Coordinator (responsible for handling the facilitation of public disputes involving multiple parties-citizens, government agencies, and private organizations); and one HUD Fellow who provides assistance to the program and works particularly on public disputes issues. Regardless of a program's staff configuration, it is essential that highly committed, energetic, and politically sensitive individuals be recruited for staff positions. Community mediation programs deal with stressful situations involving people in conflict; such work requires skilled and competent staff members. In addition, programs must be effective in recruiting talented people to serve as volunteer community mediators, must develop close working relationships with referral agencies and other organizations, and must consistently deliver high- quality services to their various constituencies. Great care is needed to ensure that those selected for staff positions are industrious, resourceful, and able to handle the many challenges that arise daily at community mediation centers. Community Mediators Community mediation programs recruit and train pools of community mediators sufficient to handle their caseload. Exhibit 4 presents a summary of the range of numbers of community mediators reported in the NAFCM survey of programs. The numbers of mediators vary considerably across programs. Sixty-five percent of programs report that they have 50 or fewer volunteer mediators. Programs typically seek to ensure that people recruited for their mediation pool have demographic characteristics representative of the community in which the program is operating. As in the case of staff selection, it is critical to select mediators with the personal skills needed to handle the potentially stressful conditions of mediation hearings. Chapter 5 presents a detailed discussion of community mediator training and qualifications. Programs need to conduct periodic training sessions to maintain a sufficient pool of mediators. Some attrition in a mediation pool is inevitable as some mediators move from the area and others become unavailable due to changed life circumstances and other factors. Some programs have also experienced attrition when mediators completed training and then went into private practice as professional mediators, charging fees to resolve family disputes and related conflicts. Program Budgets Programs receive funding from a variety of sources, including State and local governmental budgets, foundations, fees for service, and fund-raising activities. Exhibit 5 presents a summary of the sizes of program budgets reported in the NAFCM survey of programs. Because of their reliance on volunteer mediators, community mediation program budgets tend to be relatively low. The most common budget range for programs is $50,000 to $150,000, and 49 percent of the programs that included budget information in their survey response fall in this category (87 of 178 programs). The second most common category is less than $50,000, with 29 percent of programs falling in this category. Twelve percent of programs have budgets between $150,000 and $300,000; 7 percent are between $300,000 and $500,000, and only 3 percent of programs reported a budget of more than $500,000. Some of the programs with relatively large budgets include those in Albany, Asheville, Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, and San Mateo. Chapter 5 discusses funding issues. Chapter 6 provides strategies for increasing the relatively low budgets of many community mediation programs. Major Trends in the Community Mediation Field A variety of major trends are apparent in the dispute resolution field. These are discussed here briefly and examined more closely in later parts of this report. Diversification One of the most striking trends in the field is the diversification of community mediation programs into new areas of application. Individual programs handle cases ranging from minor criminal matters, to employment disputes, to conflicts between landlords and tenants. The National Association for Community Mediation has identified more than 30 different applications of community mediation. Chapter 2 presents a detailed discussion of many of these diverse dispute resolution services. Specialization A corollary to the diversification of individual programs just mentioned is the specialization of training and mediation activity by selected mediators. Some topical areas that have extensive technical legal and financial features (such as divorce and custody mediation) require extensive training of mediators. Many of the mediators who receive such training go on to specialize in handling primarily the type of dispute in their area of specialization rather than the full range of types of cases referred to individual community mediation programs. The Replication of Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Institutional Settings Many programs have begun to assist various types of institutions to develop in-house dispute resolution mechanisms. For example, programs have trained school children to serve as conflict managers in hallways and playgrounds. Community mediation programs have also helped businesses and nonprofit entities such as hospitals establish in-house conflict resolution programs. The Clark County (Nevada) Neighborhood Justice Center has provided training to selected employees at Bally's Casino to establish an in-house conflict resolution program. The management of the casino approached the mediation program for such assistance after a murder occurred involving two employees. The New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution in Albuquerque has been active in establishing conflict resolution mechanisms within juvenile correctional institutions in that State. Community mediation programs provide technical assistance in program establishment and training for relevant staff members. Some programs remain available to take cases on referral from the in- house mechanisms when circumstances require more neutral settings for settlement. The Use of Community Mediation Programs as Training Resources Community mediation programs have increasingly provided training in a wide variety of topic areas dealing with conflict resolution skills and strategies for developing mediation mechanisms. Clients for training include general community members, students and teachers, corporate officials and employees, personnel at government agencies, and others. Programs typically charge fees for training programs based on the nature of the training and the trainees. Expanded Roles in Handling Public Disputes A number of community mediation programs have become very involved in the handling of public disputes such as zoning issues and facility-siting issues. For example, the Orange County program located in Carrboro, North Carolina, has handled important public disputes dealing with the development of a downtown area, land use, and school board decisions. Expanded Roles in Handling Intergroup Conflicts A number of programs have begun to handle intergroup disputes (such as those between gangs and between ethnic groups after racially motivated violence.). One New York State program held a series of community meetings following the inception of the Tawana Brawley case, which involved allegations of attacks on a young African- American woman by white assailants. Two programs in New York City (one in Brooklyn and the other in Washington Heights) had mediators go out on the streets after the Rodney King verdict was announced to encourage local members of the African-American community to demonstrate peacefully. The New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution mediates disputes between rival gangs. An Increased Concern With Quality Control and Qualifications A recurrent theme in the mediation field in recent years has been an increasing concern for quality control and a growing emphasis on establishing qualifications for mediators. Community mediation centers have long been concerned with ensuring that they provide high-quality services to clients. Programs have sought to select promising people to be mediators, to train them well, to monitor their performance, and to provide them with ongoing training in various aspects of mediation. Community mediators are typically volunteers, some of whom go on to become full-time professional mediators handling family disputes, civil cases, and related matters. The American Bar Association (ABA), the American Arbitration Association (AAA), and the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution (SPIDR) have developed model standards for the conduct of mediators. In addition, the SPIDR Commission on Qualifications developed a detailed report entitled Ensuring Competence and Quality in Dispute Resolution Practice. The findings of the report were adopted by the SPIDR Board of Directors in April 1995. The National Institute for Dispute Resolution (NIDR) sponsored the Test Design Project to develop a performance-based methodology for selecting, training, and evaluating mediators. Controversies have emerged in many States regarding the minimal requirements for mediators, and in some locales bar associations are seeking to reserve certain classes of cases solely for lawyer mediators. These issues are explored in chapter 5. Institutionalization A number of States have provided significant funding and infrastructural support for community mediation programs. New York State leads the nation in this regard and provides funding, technical assistance, training, and monitoring for programs serving all of the counties in the State. Key Issues for Community Mediation Programs A wide variety of important issues in the community mediation field need to be addressed, including: o the design of strategies for the statewide implementation and institutionalization of what were previously experimental programs, including mechanisms for funding, technical assistance, training, monitoring, and administration; o the development of adequate and diverse funding mechanisms (such as surcharges on court case filing fees and fees for service from private sources) in addition to support from State and local governmental budgets; o the development of appropriate approaches to the adoption of standards and quality control measures for program operations (including mediator selection, training, and monitoring) that preserve the ability of programs to innovate and recruit a diverse array of community members; o the development of effective working relationships with local police, the courts, and the local bar; o the development of techniques for avoiding excessive bureaucratization, which can ultimately lower program responsiveness and the quality of services rendered; and o the development of methods for enhancing public awareness of community mediation programs and their associated benefits in order to recruit a diverse array of community mediators, obtain referrals of cases, and generate general public support for program funding. These and many additional issues are explored in later chapters of this report. Conclusion Community mediation programs provide an important service to their communities. Community volunteer mediators and program administrators grapple with many of our communities' more troubling disputes. The rewards that they are seeking for this often exhausting and emotionally draining work are clearly not monetary. Instead, they are rewarded by the sense that they have made life in their community just a little bit better. With the right support from communities and from the government, these important programs can expand sufficiently to meet pressing community needs for conflict resolution and conflict prevention services. Endnotes 1. Cook, R., J. Roehl, and D. Sheppard, Neighborhood Justice Centers Field Test: Final Evaluation Report, Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 1980. 2. Reinventing Justice 2022: Report of the Chief Justice's Commission on the Future of the Courts, Supreme Judicial Court Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1992. 3. See American Bar Association, 1993 Dispute Resolution Program Directory, Washington, DC: American Bar Association, 1993; National Association for Community Mediation, Directory of Community Mediation Programs, Washington DC: NAFCM, 1996. 4. Umbreit, M., Victim Meets Offender: The Impact of Restorative Justice and Mediation, Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 1994. 5. Putnam, Robert, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy (January 1995). 6. See National Institute of Justice, Restorative Justice Symposium: Summary of the Proceedings, Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 1996. 7. See National Institute for Dispute Resolution, "Conflict Resolution in Native Justice Traditions," NIDR Forum (Spring 1995); American Judicature Society, "Indian Tribal Courts and Justice," Judicature (November-December 1995). 8. Merry, S.E. and N. Milner, The Possibility of Popular Justice: A Case Study of Community Mediation in the United States, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. 9. Definitional material is drawn from McGillis, D., Community Dispute Resolution Programs and Public Policy, Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 1986. 10. Mediation case example is excerpted from McGillis, Community Dispute Resolution Programs and Public Policy. 11. See ruling by Judge Lewis R. Friedman in Russell Wright and Helen Wright v. Emma Brockett, "John Doe" and "Jane Doe";Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Bronx: Part IA6; Index No. 16904/89 (May 9, 1991). 12. Ibid, p.29. 13. Bush, R. and J. Folger, The Promise of Mediation, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994: 16. 14. Ibid. 15. Henderson, F.W., "Can Mediation Transform Us?," 1994-95 Annual Report of the Orange County Dispute Settlement Center: 1. 16. Sherman, R., "Four Trendlines in Conflict Resolution," NIDR News (January/February 1996). 17. Copies of the directory are available from the National Association for Community Mediation, 1726 M Street, N.W., Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036. The NAFCM telephone number is (202) 467-6226. ------------------------------ Chapter 2 The Diversification of Dispute Resolution Services ------------------------------ Key Points o Community mediation programs have greatly diversified their dispute resolution services. Such diversification has occurred for a number of reasons, including: - requests by justice system agencies and governments for additional types of services (such as the mediation of child-custody matters); - efforts by programs to provide a broader range of services while also diversifying their funding sources. o The range of types of cases processed by community mediation programs includes: - criminal case processing; - civil case processing; - school-based dispute resolution; - domestic relations/custody dispute resolution; - intergroup dispute resolution; - public policy disputes; - victim/offender mediation efforts. o This chapter provides profiles of three community mediation centers that provide highly diversified dispute resolution services: the Rochester, New York, Center for Dispute Settlement; the Orange County, North Carolina, Dispute Settlement Center; and the Albuquerque-based New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution. ------------------------------ Program Profile: Rochester (New York) Center for Dispute Settlement The Rochester Center for Dispute Settlement was established in 1973 by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) in collaboration with the local city and county government. The program was developed as a result of the AAA's successful mediation of the Rochester City School District's school integration crisis. Local leaders urged the development of the Center for Dispute Settlement in order to address major community disputes of this sort as well as to address the increasing backlog of court cases involving interpersonal disputes. The program provides conciliation, mediation, and arbitration services. The program became an independent nonprofit corporation in 1979. Since 1990, the Center has developed a comprehensive training department. The Center trains mediators, arbitrators, police review panelists, participants in peer mediation programs, and trainers. The program has more than 150 trained volunteer mediators. Over time the Center has thrived and greatly increased the range of matters it handles. The Center for Dispute Settlement mediates neighborhood disputes, juvenile cases, small claims cases, and many other types of conflict. Because of its high level of credibility, the Center has also been asked to conduct fact-finding for citizen complaints against police officers, victim/offender reconciliation, and divorce mediations, including custody and visitation agreements. In addition, the Center mediates human rights complaints for the New York State Division of Human Rights, arbitrates housing disputes for the Rochester Housing Authority, processes grievances under the Comprehensive Employment Training Act, and monitors elections and lotteries. The Center has also expanded geographically and now provides services to a six-county region in western New York. ------------------------------ Program Profile: Orange County (North Carolina) Dispute Settlement Center The Orange County Dispute Settlement Center was established in 1978. The center was the first such program in North Carolina and it played a major role in stimulating the growth of similar centers across the state. There are now 24 community mediation programs in North Carolina. The Orange County Center handles a very diverse caseload and mediates interpersonal disputes, divorce and other couples-related conflicts, and public policy disputes. In addition, the center holds victim/offender reconciliation hearings. Public policy disputes handled by the center are discussed in this chapter's main text and include land use, social service, environmental health, and other matters. The center is also very active in training students and teachers in conflict resolution skills and in establishing peer mediation programs. The center provides training for its own mediators and also organizes specialized conflict resolution training for government agencies, businesses, human service providers, churches, and others. The center has 50 trained volunteer mediators and 7 staff members. In light of the center's accomplishments, the North Carolina Governor's Crime Commission presented the program with the North Carolina Crime and Justice Award for Outstanding Criminal Justice Program. The Dispute Settlement Center's budget during the 1995-96 fiscal year totaled $230,000. The program receives funding from a wide array of sources: government (39 percent), program service fees (27 percent), contributions (17 percent), the United Way (14 percent), and other sources, such as foundations (3 percent). Such diversification of funding can enhance the sustainability of community mediation programs. This issue is discussed in chapter 5. ------------------------------ Program Profile: New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution The New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution was established in 1987. The center provides a wide range of dispute resolution services and also is very active in training and technical assistance nationally and internationally. The program provides mediation services for interpersonal conflicts, divorce cases, workplace disputes, parent/child disputes, youth gang conflicts, and many other types of cases. The center's 120 trained volunteer mediators handle this diverse caseload. Once the center had developed expertise in resolving a broad array of types of cases, it established the National Resource Center for Youth Mediation in 1995. The Resource Center sponsors technical assistance and training for other jurisdictions seeking to develop and refine mediation programs. The National Resource Center has provided technical assistance to mediation programs across the nation and has delivered conflict resolution skills training in schools, correctional institutions, and other settings. Extensive written and video training materials have been developed by the center to support its technical assistance and training efforts. The center's written materials include a violence intervention curriculum for juveniles, course materials for conflict resolution training in elementary and secondary schools, program evaluation guides, and materials on conflict resolution in corrections. The Center sponsors periodic national training institutes on a number of topics, including parent/teen mediation, school mediation, and violence prevention/conflict resolution. The center's clients for training and technical assistance services have included various school districts, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Postal Service, the YMCA of the USA, and many others. The center has also been active in providing assistance to programs overseas in such diverse settings as Turkey, Uzbekistan, and South Africa. ------------------------------ During the past decade, community mediation programs have dramatically expanded the range of types of cases that they handle. This diversification has occurred for a number of reasons. In some instances, programs have been asked to move into new topic areas by local courts, prosecutors, bar associations, city governments, and others. For example, family courts have asked for help with custody cases, city governments have sought assistance for the resolution of disputes between youth gangs, and so forth. Programs have also actively sought to diversify because they felt that they could provide valuable services to disputants in a broader range of topic areas, while also possibly diversifying the funding base for the program. For example, many programs provide technical assistance and training to local businesses and nonprofits that are interested in developing in-house dispute resolution mechanisms for employees. The diversification of the work of community mediation programs has led program leaders to be concerned not only with the resolution of conflicts that could result in court cases, but also in the prevention of offenses in the first place. Conflict resolution skills training, the enhancement of citizen participation in governmental and community decision making through the facilitation of intergroup public disputes meetings, and the establishment of ongoing, in-house dispute resolution mechanisms in a diverse array of institutions (businesses, government, nonprofit organizations, schools, correctional facilities) are examples of this growing prevention focus. This chapter provides information about many of these important efforts by community mediation programs to diversify their services. Examples are provided below of some of the most prominent and promising areas of application, ranging from the traditional to the highly innovative. Brief profiles of a number of specific programs are presented to illustrate how individual programs handle a wide range of types of disputes. Efforts to develop comprehensive statewide dispute resolution systems encompassing the broad range of applications are described. Appendix A presents a summary of useful resources that provide additional information about the diverse applications of dispute resolution, including national surveys of relevant State statutes and court rules that can assist a program in diversifying its caseload. Criminal Case Processing The first community mediation programs focused solely on criminal case processing. The Philadelphia Municipal Court Arbitration Tribunal and the Columbus, Ohio, Night Prosecutor's Program originated in justice system agencies. They received referrals of misdemeanor cases entering the local court systems. Many of the programs that emerged in the following decade continued to place an emphasis on criminal case processing. Today, a number of types of criminal offenses predominate in community mediation program caseloads, including harassment, minor assaults, trespassing, and property damage. Criminal matters are referred to community mediation programs at many points in the criminal justice system, including: (1) police referrals at the scene of an offense, (2) police referrals of walk-in complaints at the police station, (3) court clerk and prosecutor referrals when a complainant first brings a case to the system, and (4) referrals from judges on the bench during initial appearances of offenders charged with criminal offenses involving friends, relatives, or acquaintances. The bulk of referrals from the justice system have typically come from the police, prosecutors, and the courts. The growth of community policing provides the opportunity for sharply increased collaboration between police departments and community mediation programs and consequent increased referrals from the police. Many observers feel that community policing is emerging as the dominant law enforcement philosophy in the United States. It promotes crime prevention through police problem- solving in collaboration with communities. Community policing also strongly emphasizes customer and client services. Community police officers in many communities see dispute resolution programs as helpful mechanisms for resolving long-standing disputes in neighborhoods and for avoiding the escalation of misdemeanor offenses to felonies. Recent research has demonstrated that calls for service diminish from parties involved in mediation hearings, which frees up police resources.[1] Three community mediation programs in the San Francisco Bay area (in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley) are developing innovative relationships with local community policing programs to enhance case referrals and form a partnership to resolve conflicts. Civil Case Processing Some community mediation programs diversified into small claims case processing during the first decade of the movement. Other programs were developed (for example, in San Jose, California, and Portland, Maine) that specialized in minor civil case processing. Such cases typically involve complaints of shoddy workmanship, defective merchandise, bad debts, and the like. Some programs locate mediators at the small claims court and process cases on referral by the judge immediately; others schedule hearings at the program's offices either before or after the parties' initial appearance in the small claims court. Chapter 4 provides a detailed discussion of the findings of research on small claims mediation. The research demonstrates that disputants involved in the mediation of small claims cases tend to be more satisfied with both the process and the outcome of case handling than disputants whose cases were processed by the courts. Defendants are also more likely to comply with the resulting agreement following mediation than are clients involved in court case processing of small claims matters.[2] School-Based Dispute Resolution Violence in American schools has increased in recent years and has been a topic of great concern. Many community mediation programs have worked with local schools to provide conflict resolution skills training and also to develop student peer mediation programs for the resolution of conflicts within the schools. Such efforts have spread rapidly across the nation. According to the American Bar Association, more than 4,000 schools now offer conflict resolution skills training to students or have internal dispute resolution programs, or both. The Conflict Resolution Education Network of the National Institute on Dispute Resolution (formerly the NAME) has been a leader in promoting school-based conflict resolution mechanisms. The Network has developed a comprehensive catalog of conflict resolution materials for the schools. The catalog has been distributed to more than 55,000 schools in the United States and offers school-based conflict resolution training and program development materials that have been prepared by programs across the country. Topics addressed by the documents offered in the Network catalog include: (1) strategies for teaching conflict resolution; (2) curriculum materials for such courses; (3) specialized documents on such topics as implementing parent/child mediation in youth corrections settings, mediation and conflict resolution for gang-involved youth, and conflict management for juvenile treatment facilities; (4) evaluation studies of school-based mediation programs and kits for self-evaluation; and (5) various bibliographies and resource materials. In addition, the Network has developed draft standards for the conduct of school-based conflict resolution programs. The Federal government has been a strong supporter of school-based conflict resolution efforts. The Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program (which had $482 million in funding in FY95) encourages the use of its funds for peer mediation and conflict resolution programs. These funds have been valuable to community mediation programs across the country. Some school systems have processed very large caseloads of disputes. For example, more than 1,100 mediation hearings were held over a one-and- one-half-year period at the middle schools and high schools of Buncombe County, North Carolina. The Mediation Center of Asheville, North Carolina, provided the training and technical assistance to establish the county's school-based mediation effort, and more than 330 student mediators were involved in handling disputes. The program reports that the schools experienced a reduction in violence and that mediation sessions resulted in the elimination of 742 days of in-school suspension and 1,220 days of out-of-school suspension. This total equals more than 10 years of classroom time. Related Dispute Prevention Initiatives Robert Sherman, a program officer at the Surdna Foundation, has noted that many community mediation programs are increasingly "testing their roles as places where community conflicts are analyzed with an eye toward dispute prevention rather than intervention. Using collaborative processes, communities come together to craft agreements and prescribe responses aimed at reducing known sources of community tensions."[3] Such proactive involvement in dispute prevention is an interesting counterpoint to the traditional reactive approach of dispute resolution organizations. The Surdna Foundation has recently funded a experiment in this arena in collaboration with the Community Board Program of San Francisco, the Rochester (New York) Center for Dispute Settlement, and the National Institute for Dispute Resolution. The project will test the ability of the two community mediation centers to intervene and effectively prevent emerging conflicts. The community tensions that will be addressed will be identified by youth in each city. The community mediation centers will work in collaboration with neighborhood police officers in this conflict prevention effort. Domestic Relations/Custody Dispute Resolution Many community mediation programs across the nation have become involved in domestic relations, visitation, and custody dispute resolution. Mediators typically receive 40 to 60 hours of specialized training to handle these cases since mediators need to have some familiarity with legal and financial issues involved in divorce and custody and also to have an appreciation for child development issues and related matters. New mediators are often apprenticed to more experienced ones to obtain further exposure to divorce/custody mediation before handling sessions on their own. The number of mediation sessions needed to handle cases varies depending on the issues being addressed. A single mediation session may be all that is required to deal with visitation issues. If mediators are handling the full range of issues involved in a divorce, then six to eight mediation sessions may be required. The mediation of domestic relations matters is challenging. The fact that some couples have a history of domestic violence and abuse adds an additional dimension of complexity to practice in this area. Many observers feel strongly that mediation is simply not appropriate in cases involving violence or abuse because the parties are manifestly not equal in power, and mediation hearings may simply lead to perpetuation of the abuses. This important issue is discussed in chapter 5. The Academy of Family Mediators, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, and many local organizations composed of family mediators provide workshops that can offer further training in the handling of divorce/custody dispute resolution. The Academy of Family Mediators is the leading national organization in this area. It has developed competency standards for family and divorce mediators and has also established ethical guidelines and standards of practice. The Academy has approximately 3,000 members who provide family mediation. Family mediators who handle divorce and custody matters work in various settings, including community mediation programs, family courts, and private practice. Intergroup Dispute Resolution A number of community mediation programs have been very active in mediating disputes among youth groups and gangs. Such mediation sessions often bring together the groups with parents, school officials, and others to resolve conflicts and prevent violence. The Washington Heights Beacons Community Center in New York City has been active in intervening in gang disputes that have been the source of extensive violence in the community. The New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution has developed training materials to help other programs deal with the complexities of gang-related dispute resolution. Programs have also sought to deal with conflicts between various ethnic and racial groups in their locales. Chapter 1 provided brief examples of such intergroup dispute resolution efforts involved in the Tawana Brawley case and the Rodney King case. Public Policy Disputes A number of community mediation programs have become very active in the handling of public policy disputes in their jurisdictions. These programs hold mediation sessions or facilitate meetings for a diverse array of organizations: governmental agencies, community organizations and advocacy groups, business groups, school boards, governmental commissions, and others. The Orange County (North Carolina) Dispute Settlement Center, discussed in a program profile in this chapter, has one staff member who works full-time on public disputes. In addition to providing mediation services, this staff member, along with trained program volunteers, also provides meeting facilitation services. Some of the public dispute efforts involve many parties. For example, in one western North Carolina county, local governmental officials, realtors, home builders, owners of large tracts of land, development and mortgage lenders, an electric utility, an environmental group, and a community action agency were brought together to develop a plan to address a housing shortage in the county. The Orange County staff member facilitated the meetings and helped to mediate among the diverse interests at the table. The Orange County Dispute Settlement Center also recently handled a dispute involving a local landfill. Four "facilitated work sessions" were held in which citizen representatives from local neighborhoods met with officials from three local governments. The sessions, held in the presence of community observers and the news media, addressed 22 areas of the citizens' concerns, including water quality protection, noise abatement, and related issues. An agreement was reached and adopted by the elected governing boards of the three governmental jurisdictions. Victim/Offender Mediation Efforts Victim/offender mediation efforts differ from the traditional mediation of criminal matters because the parties are typically strangers, rather than friends, relatives, or acquaintances. The Center for Restorative Justice and Mediation of the University of Minnesota describes victim/offender mediation programs as efforts in which "trained mediators facilitate face-to-face meetings between victims and offenders to express feelings, discuss the harm done by the crime, and negotiate a restitution agreement."[4] The mediators are usually community volunteers working with community nonprofit agencies. Offenders are typically required to fully admit guilt prior to the conduct of such mediation sessions. More than 120 victim/offender mediation services are available across the country. Some are affiliated with community mediation programs, and others are freestanding programs or are affiliated with justice system agencies. Community mediation programs that offer victim/offender mediation services usually first meet separately with the victim and the offender to obtain their consent to meet together and discuss the offense and its impact. During the victim/offender mediation session, victims have the opportunity to explain the harm done by the offender and to ask the offender questions regarding why the offense was committed and why they were selected as the victim. Such meetings provide victims with the opportunity to confront the offender and present offenders with the opportunity, if they choose, to offer an apology and discuss possibilities for restitution to the victim. Victim/offender mediation programs seek to contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders by making them aware of the impact of their offenses. They also seek to underscore the accountability of the offender. The meetings are based on a theory of restorative justice of the sort discussed in chapter 1. Additional Areas of Application Community mediation programs are involved in a wide variety of additional innovative areas of application. Examples include landlord/tenant dispute resolution initiatives, employment case processing, juvenile court case mediation, parent/child mediation, truancy mediation, Americans with Disabilities Act case processing, crisis intervention teams, bad debt and worthless check mediation, Equal Employment Opportunity case processing, farm debt case processing, real estate and earnest-money case processing, and mobile home dispute processing. Comprehensive Statewide Dispute Resolution Systems The diversification of individual program caseloads is occurring across the nation. A number of States have decided to systematize the delivery of the full range of dispute resolution services and are seeking to develop comprehensive Statewide dispute resolution systems.[5] New Jersey provides the most dramatic example of a State effort to develop such a comprehensive approach. The New Jersey Supreme Court established a Standing Committee on Complementary Dispute Resolution (CDR) in 1990 to foster the development of a Statewide system. The Committee developed a Statewide master plan for dispute resolution in 1991 and also recommended rules and guidelines for CDR program operation. The guidelines included the specification of qualifications and training for mediators. As a result of this effort, New Jersey has more than 200 dispute resolution programs in operation; 37 different types of programs exist in 21 counties of the State. Seven types of programs account for approximately 140 of the State's dispute resolution programs. These types are: (1) community mediation programs associated with the municipal courts, (2) custody and visitation programs, (3) matrimonial early settlement panels, (4) juvenile conference committees associated with the family courts, (5) small claims mediation programs, (6) automobile arbitration efforts, and (7) personal injury arbitration programs in the civil courts. Professor Paul Tractenberg of Rutgers Law School- Newark has described the New Jersey system