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The Effectiveness of Mediation with juvenile offenders "The courts of this country should not be the place where the resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where the disputes end - after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried... " Juvenile crime and delinquency are increasingly growing social problems in the United States. The current juvenile crime system which involves juvenile court, juvenile hall and programs designed to rehabilitate have not proven highly effective in most cases. As court dockets grow and juveniles tend to re offend after getting out of the system, alternative dispute resolution programs have cropped up in many states. Two of these programs, family mediation and victim / offender mediation, present interesting and effective alternatives to the court system.
After examining these types of mediation, in addition to problems such as contract rules and confidentiality which present unique problems to juveniles mediation, it should be clear that while both parent / teen and victim offender mediation are successful, parent-teen mediation has the best long term effects and better avoids confidentiality and contract problems. Mediators are neutral third parties who engage the disputing parties in dialogue for the purpose of coming up with a solution agreeable to both parties. The process is voluntary for both of the disputants, who must agree ahead of time to participate in the process in order for it to work. The process is also confidential, with the parties and mediator signing a confidentiality agreement ahead of time to ensure the process is not used as discovery. The standard mediation is a five-step process. The first step is the introduction, where the mediator explains the process, the rules and confidentiality.
The second step involves each party having uninterrupted time to explain the dispute from their viewpoint. During the third stage the mediator identifies the issues and interests of each party based on what they said during their uninterrupted time. During the fourth stage the parties each suggest options to solve their problem. In the fifth stage the mediator draws up a binding written agreement based on the options the parties choose, which the parties then sign. 41 -Nov Advocate (Idaho) 10, 13. An essential difference between mediation and court is that the finding of facts is not essential in mediation, and in some cases does not have any importance in the ultimate resolution of the dispute. 20 Seton Hall Legis. J. 433, 453.
The objective of mediation is a mutually acceptable agreement and not a determination of right or wrong. Id. Thus, mediation is more therapeutic than judgmental, creating the opportunity for more long-term results and satisfaction by the participants. Id.
While mediation has been very successful with adults, many law enforcement officials didn't think it would work with juveniles because they had to voluntarily submit to it. However, the success of the juvenile programs seems to be because of the voluntariness. Where many juveniles have failed when they were put through counseling and punishment, they tend to succeed at mediation because they feel empowered by choosing to participate. In addition to being voluntary, the neutrality of the mediator is appealing to teens. This neutrality becomes especially important in teen / parent mediations where there is normally a power struggle in the home. The mediation process gives the teen equal time to speak without interruption, the opportunity to express their disappointments and have their wishes be heard. 41 -Nov Advocate (Idaho) 10, 13.
The empowerment they receive through the process can often be an important catalyst in motivating them toward change. Id. In many states legislation has been created which allows funding for alternative dispute resolution programs and gives law enforcement agencies the authority to use the programs. In California, most programs developed under the broad authority granted in the California Welfare and Institutions Code 654, which gives law enforcement personnel the authority to use the programs (look up specifics). Additional legislation such as the California Dispute Resolution Programs Act of 1991 provide funding for these programs to ensure their survival. Parent / teen mediation programs have emerged around the United States in an attempt to deter status offenders and give families communication tools to solve their problems.
Status offenders such as runaways, truants and curfew violators are often thought of as troubled youth. 41 -Nov Advocate (Idaho) 10 (1998). Statistics demonstrate that a significant number of them will later engage in more serious criminal behavior. Id. Because of the already full court dockets, many status offenders are not brought before court; thus they are not deterred from further improper behavior.
Id. There are also conflicting viewpoints of how to deter status offenders from more serious crimes. Some feel that the forcefulness of a court proceeding is the only deterrent. Id. Others believe that the court system actually hardens the status offender's attitudes, leading to further criminal behavior. Id.
Mediation has emerged as a way of keeping the teen out of the system, to try to prevent them from getting the stigma of a court conviction. Mediation is believed to be especially well suited in parent-child conflicts. The focus on achieving consensus in a non-hostile atmosphere is likely to generate long-term solutions because they satisfy both the parents and child's needs. 41 -NOV Advocate (Idaho) 11. Where litigation drives parties further apart, mediation can bring them together. Mediation avoids the exacerbation of conflict because the atmosphere is exploratory rather than accusatory.
Id. The sessions are not open to the public, and everything that is said is off the record. In San Diego, California the principal organization running a parent / teen mediation program is the San Diego Mediation Center. The Center decided to enter into parent- teen mediations in 1996, after having mediated adult disputes for years. The program had 104 cases during its first three years and experiences 30 % growth each year. The organizations mediators are volunteers, and they must undergo 40 hours of training in mediation, in addition to special training in problems relating to teenagers.
Normally a mediator must be very experienced to enter juvenile mediation because of the sensitivity of the issues involved. The fee for a mediation is $ 150, adjustable on a sliding scale for those unable to pay. While there is no formal referral process for the Center, it gets mediations through probation officers, school counselors, police, teachers and interested parents and teens who contact the Center. The program also advertises by touring schools to talk to teens. The program has a 90 % success rate of getting a written agreement between the parent and child. This success rate is higher than any of the Mediation Center's other programs.
Betty McManus, one of the Center's mediators, credits the success of the program to the fact that they don't force the teen to do anything they don't want to do. The teens like the fact that they come away feeling like they did not surrender anything. The types of problems the Mediation Center deals with are curfews, respect, gang involvement, grades, truancy, runaways, household responsibilities and other behavioral or communication issues. The main goal of the program is to balance the power in the parent-teen relationship and create an atmosphere where both parties feel comfortable tackling topics.
The mediators push gently through highly emotional battles to get to the heart of the conflict. The mediator then defines the problems and has both the parent and teen come up with solutions, which are written on a dry erase board. All the solutions are then evaluated and the ones the parties settle on are drawn up in a contract that is detailed, realistic and time specific. For example, if a teen says he will get better grades, the mediator asks him how he will do it, forcing the teen to get very specific about when and how he will start.
The cases that end without agreement are normally ones that are highly volatile, where one of the parties is not willing to listen to the other. Victim offender mediation was first created for adult mediations as an answer to concerns that victims are often completely excluded from the justice system and are often not compensated for the harm that occurred to them. The theory used in victim offender mediation is known as "restorative justice", where the person violated is considered the primary victim and the state is the secondary victim. Normal criminal proceedings are operated in the opposite fashion, with the state being the primary victim. The goal with victim-offender mediation is to have both victims and offenders assume an active role in restoring the material and psychological losses that accrued to the individual victims and the community.
The most popular and widespread of these programs is the Victim/Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP). Vorp's are organized on the county level, with one program serving one urban or several rural counties. One of the largest Vorp's dealing with juvenile delinquents is in Orange County, California. The program receives funding through the California Dispute Resolution Programs Act of 1991, which assesses an $ 8 surcharge on civil court filing fees. The money generate from the Act is distributed among various alternative dispute resolution programs in the state, with the Orange County program receiving $ 282, 000 a year. Between 1989 and 1995, a total of 2, 496 juvenile offenders were referred to the Orange County program.
Referrals were made either before trial by a probation officer or as part of a condition of the juvenile's sentence. Most of the program's mediators are volunteers. As in family mediation, both the victim and offender have to voluntarily agree to enter the program, though in this type of mediation the offender may risk court sanctions if he refuses. A study of the referrals between 1989 and 1995 showed that victims were most likely to agree to meet their offender in minor personal crimes and serious to minor property crimes, with 79 % of minor personal crime victims and 74 % of all property crime victims agreeing to the meeting. Victims were least likely to agree to meeting their offenders in cases of serious personal crimes such as murder, assault and battery, with only 58 % of victims in these cases agreeing. When the victims chose not to meet their offender they most often indicated that it was because the case was not important enough to participate, that they had already worked out an arrangement with the offender or in 9 % of the cases that they did not have confidence in the offenders goodwill.
Offenders were least likely to agree to meet the victim in minor personal crimes, with only 69 % agreeing to mediate. They were most likely to agree in property offenses, where 80 % agreed to meet. In serious personal crimes they agreed to meet their victim in 77 % of the cases. Offenders that did not agree to mediate either did so because they did not feel they had done anything wrong or because their parents did not want them to participate.
The cases with the largest number of referrals were graffiti and tagging, where 67 % of the cases referred reached mediation. The second highest category to reach mediation was serious property offenses such as theft, hit and run, burglary and arson, where 54 % of the cases ended up in mediation. The Victim/Offender mediation process works much like family mediation, with the victim and offender meeting face to face. Normally the victim speaks first to talk about the crime and how it has effected their life. Next the offender speaks to explain why they did it and give an apology if they want to. The second part of the process is where the two parties discuss restitution, which usually is community service or monetary restitution.
The process is considered therapeutic to the victim because it helps them put the crime behind them and assures them that the offender will not harm them again. Often the victims take the mediation as an opportunity to express to their offender how the crime effected their life. For the juvenile offenders it is considered beneficial because they get to hear firsthand how they hurt their victim. By humanizing their crime through their victim rather than just receiving a punishment through the court it could deter them from perpetrating the same crime again.
Of the cases referred to VORP between 1989 and 1995, 48 % of them reached an agreement through mediation and 19 % were still in the process of being mediated. Where the victim and offender met face to face there was an agreement 99 % of the time. When an agreement was reached in mediation they were followed up on 96. 8 percent of the time. While the percentages of compliance with the agreement for those who reach mediation are good, one of the biggest indicators of success is whether or not the juvenile goes back to crime. In the area of recidivism the statistics are not as good. When a comparison was made between juveniles who participated in VORP and those who chose not to mediate, the numbers of juvenile who committed another crime within a year was 28 % in both groups, th...
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