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

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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.

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NCJ 165698

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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 

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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

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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

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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.

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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).

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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.

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Chapter 1

An Overview of Developments in the Community
Mediation Field

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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.

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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 in his
book, New Jersey Dispute Resolution: A Lawyer's
Guide to State and Federal Court Programs.[6] 
Professor Tractenberg notes that the New Jersey 
system is still a work in progress. He has stated 
that "the grand design has not been fully realized 
yet. The vision of a comprehensive, integrated 
justice center has been achieved in only a few 
vicinages [court districts]. The quality of 
individual CDR programs varies considerably from 
vicinage to vicinage, and even within vicinages 
from one court division to another. . . . 
Improvements in public outreach and user 
friendliness are needed."[7] 

Professor Frank Sander of Harvard Law School has
been an effective proponent of comprehensive dispute
resolution systems. He proposed the development of
"multi-door" courts in 1976, with different types
of dispute resolution services matched to the
varying nature of the disputes. Experimental 
multi-door court programs which have been developed 
in Houston, Tulsa (Oklahoma), Cambridge 
(Massachusetts), and elsewhere seek to screen 
incoming cases and assign them to appropriate 
dispute resolution processes.[8] 

Conclusion 

Community mediation programs have handled an
increasingly broad array of types of conflicts. 
The major types of disputes that are being 
processed by community mediation programs 
have been reviewed briefly in this chapter. 
In light of the growing scope of program 
activities, Margaret Hermann, a researcher
at the Vinson Institute of Government of the
University of Georgia and a long-term observer 
of the community mediation field, has recently 
asked, "What is our sphere of anticipated influence 
(a particular conflict; the people directly or 
indirectly involved in a conflict; the 
institutional setting in which conflicts 
arise, for example, schools, workplaces
and universities; or the communal settings that
provide the context for the conflict, for example,
families, neighborhoods, cities, and American
society)?"[9] Different observers have different
answers to these questions. The scope and
accomplishments of the community mediation field
will eventually be determined by the ambitions of
policymakers and practitioners and by how these
ambitions play out in the often rough-and-tumble
arena of American society. 

The impact of the diversification of dispute
resolution services on program priorities is
examined in chapter 6. Current incentives to
diversify services in the direction of various
contract and fee-bearing services can potentially
lead programs to reduce their emphasis on obtaining
referrals from justice system agencies (the police,
prosecutors, and courts). The implications of such
shifts are examined in chapter 6. 

Endnotes 

1. Schuller, P., "Benefiting From Mediation Services,"
Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency
Quarterly (Spring 1995). 

2. McEwen, C., and R. Maiman, "Mediation in the
Maine District Courts: An Empirical Study," Maine
Law Journal (1981). 

3. Sherman, R., "Four Trendlines in Conflict
Resolution," NIDR News (January/February 1996). 

4. Center for Restorative Justice and Mediation,
Restorative Justice: For Victims, Communities, and
Offenders, Center for Restorative Justice and
Mediation, School of Social Work, University 
of Minnesota, 1996. 

5. See Tevelin, D., "The Future of Alternative
Dispute Resolution," NIDR Forum (Winter 1992). 

6. Tractenberg, P., New Jersey Dispute Resolution:
A Lawyer's Guide to State and Federal Court
Programs, Newark, NJ: New Jersey Law Journal 
Books, 1994. 

7. Tractenberg, P., "Dispute Resolution in New
Jersey," NIDR News. 

8. See Sander, F., "Varieties of Dispute
Processing," Federal Rules Decisions, no. 70 (1976)
for his original conceptualization of the multi-
door courts concept. 

9. Hermann, M., "Reflections on Transformation a
FRDR Research on Community and Neighborhood Justice
Centers," NIDR Forum (Summer 1994). 

------------------------------

Chapter 3 

Establishing and Refining Community Mediation
Programs: Resources for Program Design, Support, 
and Funding

------------------------------

Key Points

o Many national organizations have played a
critical role in the growth of the community
mediation field, including:
 
- the National Association for Community Mediation;

- the American Bar Association;
 
- the National Institute for Dispute Resolution;
 
- the Society of Professionals in Dispute
Resolution;
 
- the American Arbitration Association; and 

- the Academy of Family Mediators.

o As the community mediation field has evolved,
statewide organizations have played an increasingly 
important role in supporting program design, 
implementation, and operations. Two major types 
of statewide organizations assist programs: 1) state
associations of programs and (2) state governmental
organizations (some of which target specifically
community mediation while others provide services
to a broad array of dispute resolution
mechanisms).

o This chapter provides detailed examples of
statewide programs that provide assistance to
community mediation centers in Hawaii,
Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina,
and Ohio.

o Many local community mediation programs also
provide extensive technical assistance and training 
to other centers across the country. Examples of such
programs are provided in this chapter. 

------------------------------

National Association for Community Mediation
Program Directory 

The National Association for Community Mediation
published a directory of its member organizations
in 1996. Information for the directory was drawn
from a questionnaire survey of programs. The
directory provides profiles of each organization
and includes the following information: 

(1) Basic Descriptive Information (program name,
address, telephone number, fax number, name of program
director); 

(2) Year That Program Was Established; 

(3) Geographic Area Served; 

(4) Number of Staff and Number of Volunteer
Mediators; 

(5) Type of Organization (such as private,
nonprofit); 

(6) Budget Range; 

(7) Types of Mediation Offered (17 categories-for
example, interpersonal, divorce/custody, public 
policy were provided on the questionnaire, along with 
the option to add others); 

(8) Languages Services Offered in Addition to
English; 

(9) Services Offered in Addition to Mediation; and 

(10) Services Available to Other Programs (such as
technical assistance or training). 

The NAFCM questionnaire sought additional data that
are not included in the directory's program
profiles. For example, detailed information was
sought regarding mediation and mediation
training (for example, the certification or
credentialing process [if any], eligibility
criteria for mediators, home State's
legislative rules for mediation [if any], use of
co-mediation versus solo mediation, times when
mediation hearings are held, interpretation
services, number of hours of training, specialized
training, provision of conflict resolution training
for the public). 

Programs were also asked what services they would
like to receive from NAFCM, whether they are
willing to provide assistance to other centers, and
related questions. They were also asked to provide
NAFCM with their mission statements, training
agendas, evaluations, newsletters, publications
list (if any), and related materials.

------------------------------

The Current Activities of the ABA Section of
Dispute Resolution 

The Section of Dispute Resolution now has
approximately 6,000 members and is one of the 
fastest-growing sections of the ABA. The Section 
has 25 committees addressing topics across the
spectrum of the dispute resolution field. The
Committee on Community-Based Programs is one of 
the 25 committees and it supports the planning and
implementation of such programs. Other committees
deal with such topics as "Federal Court annexed/
connected programs," "private judging,"
"legislation," and "arbitration." 

The Section continues to publish a useful dispute
resolution program directory as well as a
newsletter, a magazine, summaries of symposia, and
audio tapes on various topics, such as employment 
arbitration, land use, and environmental
mediation. The ABA also collaborated with the
American Arbitration Association (AAA) and the 
Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution 
(SPIDR) in the development of "Model Standards 
of Conduct for Mediators" (these standards are 
discussed in detail in chapter 5). The 1995 Chair 
of the Section of Dispute Resolution, Judge Resa 
Harris, has a strong interest in mediation in 
the schools and is likely to support a variety of 
activities in this topic area of interest to many 
community mediation programs.

------------------------------

Targeted Assistance for School-Based Mediation 

The National Association for Mediation in Education
(NAME) was established in 1984 by a group of
educators and community mediators to support the 
spread of conflict resolution training in the 
schools. The Massachusetts District Court 
Department and the University of Massachusetts 
at Amherst cosponsored the first meeting that 
led to the development of NAME. NAME has served 
as a valuable clearinghouse in its topic area. 
It has developed many useful materials, including 
a catalog of resources available in this field from 
programs across the nation, Fourth R: Conflict 
Resolution in Schools Catalog for Teens.[3] The 
catalog was developed in collaboration with NIDR, 
and NAME catalogs have been distributed to more 
than 55,000 schools. 

NAME has sought to support mediation in education
through information dissemination, technical 
assistance, conferences, and promotion of relevant 
Federal legislation such as the Safe and Drug-Free 
Schools Program (which has funded many peer 
mediation and conflict resolution programs in
schools across the country). 

In November 1995 the NIDR and NAME boards of
directors approved the merger of NAME into 
NIDR. The NAME offices have moved from Amherst, 
Massachusetts, to the NIDR headquarters in 
Washington, D.C. This merger will enable NAME 
to benefit from the national networking
capacities of NIDR. The combined effort will
continue to seek to institutionalize conflict
resolution skills training in the schools. NAME 
is now called the Conflict Resolution Education
Network of NIDR. 

------------------------------

The Mediation Network of North Carolina's Role 
in Funding and Standard Setting 

The Mediation Network of North Carolina has
vigorously sought funding support for programs 
from the North Carolina legislature. The network
prepares detailed briefing books for legislators
reviewing the accomplishments of programs across
the State and meets with relevant legislators. The
network has achieved strong bipartisan support for
program funding, and more than $800,000 was
appropriated for community mediation programs in
the State's 1995-97 budget. Centers seeking State
funds certify that at least 50 percent of their
total funding is obtained from nonstate sources. 

The board of directors of the Network adopted its
"Qualifications and Standards for Certification of
Member Centers' Mediators" in 1994 and has
sponsored a voluntary certification process.
Certification is not required for individuals to
serve as mediators; it represents a level of achievement
beyond the standard initial 20-to-30-hour training
program. To be certified mediators must complete a
basic mediation training course, observe mediation
sessions and co-mediate a minimum of 10 mediation
sessions, complete 10 hours of approved
certification training beyond the basic mediation
course, be approved by a program director as
proficient at the mediation of interpersonal
disputes, agree to abide by the terms of the
Standards and Qualifications for Certification as 
well as by ethical guidelines, agree not to 
discriminate in the provision of services, and agree 
to attend regular in-service training programs 
approved by the Mediation Network. Certification 
must be renewed every two years. 

------------------------------

Data Collection and Program Monitoring Activities
of the Community Dispute Resolution Centers Program 

The New York Community Dispute Resolution Centers
Program (CDRCP) collects case information from centers
across the State regarding all of their cases,
analyzes the data, and provides the centers 
with feedback regarding their caseloads and
accomplishments. At the time of case disposition,
centers submit a numbered case profile form to the
CDRCP for all cases judged appropriate for dispute
resolution. The form includes information regarding
both the complainant and the respondent. The
centers are provided with monthly caseload
information bulletins and quarterly management 
reports . The latter reports compare current 
case processing statistics to the prior three 
months' activities and year-to-date totals. 

The CDRCP staff monitors all programs through a
variety of means, including reviewing these monthly
information bulletins and quarterly management
reports, assessing the programs'
adherence to the state program procedures manual
and performance guidelines, and conducting fiscal
audits. Staff members visit programs periodically
and also sponsor regional meetings and directors'
meetings to discuss issues confronting programs.
Centers that are experiencing problems are provided
with technical assistance. 

------------------------------

Data Collection and Evaluation Efforts of the
Michigan Community Dispute Resolution Program 

The Michigan Community Dispute Resolution Program
(CDRP) collects case statistics from community 
mediation programs across the State and reports 
detailed statistics on case dispositions, outcomes 
if no mediation hearing was held, and the results 
of 60-day follow-ups on the cases. The CDRP reports 
that between 1990 and 1994 more than 24,000 citizens
resolved their disputes through community mediation
programs. Approximately one-half of program case
referrals are received from the courts. Settlements
arrived at by disputants totaled slightly less than
$5 million. The program reports that 81 percent of
people who agreed to use the services of a
mediation center reached a satisfactory settlement
and that, based on follow-up data collected 60 days
after case disposition, 91 percent of agreements 
were kept. 

The CDRP has also funded an innovative evaluation
of the activities of Michigan mediation programs 
in order to obtain a more detailed view of program
accomplishments and problems than can be revealed 
by case statistics alone. The evaluation has a 
variety of components, including: (1) the conduct 
of extensive interviews with mediation center 
staff, mediators, clients, referral sources, 
judges, and court staff, (2) observations of 
program activities during two- day site visits 
to 30 programs, (3) a review of case
statistics collected since 1990 on approximately 
40 case-specific variables, and (4) assessment of
follow-up survey data and surveys of community
members. The State Justice Institute and the 
Hudson-Webber Foundation are providing
funding for the evaluation, which is being
conducted by Central Michigan University. 

------------------------------

Evaluation Research Commissioned by the Hawaii
Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution 

The Hawaii Center for Alternative Dispute
Resolution has commissioned evaluation research. 
For example, it funded the University of Hawaii's 
Program on Conflict Resolution to evaluate the 
Maui Domestic Mediation Program. The researchers 
found that 85 percent of the contested custody and 
visitation disputes referred to the program were 
suitable for mediation and that 70 percent of 
those cases reached agreements through mediation. 
The center also has commissioned evaluations of 
the mandatory small-claims mediation program, and 
the court-annexed arbitration program. The center 
conducts an active public education outreach program 
through the media and various groups to promote 
innovative dispute resolution mechanisms. 

------------------------------

A wide variety of resources exist to help 
community mediation program planners and 
administrators develop new programs and improve 
existing ones. Many national, state, and local 
organizations offer technical assistance and 
training, sponsor conferences, and provide other 
forms of guidance to programs in this field. This
chapter presents an overview of the major types of
assistance available. Appendix B provides
addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and contact
names for the organizations discussed in this chapter. 

Support From National Organizations for Community
Mediation Programs 

This section discusses the role of national
organizations in assisting dispute resolution
programs. It is followed by sections on state and
local sources of assistance. For the purposes of
this report, national organizations are considered
to include national associations (such as the
American Bar Association and the Society of 
Professionals in Dispute Resolution), Federal 
agencies (such as the Justice Department),
or other organizations with national memberships
and/or mandates (such as the National
Institute for Dispute Resolution). 

It is important to note that while some State and
locally based organizations primarily provide
technical assistance within their specific
jurisdictions or regions, others provide highly
valued technical assistance nationwide and
internationally. Examples of local programs that
provide such national and international assistance
include the Justice Center of Atlanta, the San
Francisco Community Board Program, the New Mexico
Center for Dispute Resolution, and the Durham Dispute 
Settlement Center. 

The Role of National Organizations in the Initial
Growth of Community Mediation Programs 

National organizations played a critical role in
stimulating the initial growth of community
mediation programs across the nation in the late
1970s and early 1980s. The American Bar Association
(ABA) played an important role through its
sponsorship of the Pound Conference on justice
reform in 1976. This conference called for
experimentation with community mediation mechanisms
and strongly influenced Judge Griffin Bell's
efforts to develop neighborhood justice centers
when he was appointed Attorney General in 1977. The
ABA's Special Committee on Resolution of Minor
Disputes (the precursor to the ABA's current
Section of Dispute Resolution) was very active in
supporting community dispute resolution efforts in
the early days of the field. As was mentioned
earlier, the Special Committee sponsored a national
directory of programs, held conferences to 
encourage program development, coordinated the 
delivery of technical assistance to many 
emerging programs, networked with local bar
associations to encourage their participation, 
and helped to reduce resistance to community 
mediation by members of the bar. 

The American Arbitration Association (AAA) and the
Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution
(IMCR) were also very important early 
national forces in the community mediation 
field. Both organizations sought to apply insights 
gained from work in labor mediation to the
community mediation setting, and both sponsored
experimental programs. The AAA was the initial
sponsor of the Rochester Center for Dispute
Settlement, which was profiled in the preceding
chapter. IMCR sponsors dispute resolution centers 
in New York and Bronx Counties, New York. 

The Federal government also played a key role and
provided seed grants for many early programs
through the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. 
The National Institute of Justice of the U.S. 
Justice Department developed a variety of reports to
encourage experimentation with community mediation
programs; funded three very visible programs in
Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles; and
supported early evaluations of programs in the
field. The Justice Department's Community Relations
Service (CRS) also made important contributions to
the development of community mediation programs.
Personnel from the CRS provided technical
assistance and mediation training to a number of
the early community mediation programs. 

A number of foundations, including the Ford
Foundation and the Mott Foundation, were early
supporters of the field as well. Their interest in
the field eventually led them to fund the
establishment of the National Institute for Dispute
Resolution. 

Current Major Sources of National Support 

A number of national organizations currently
provide valuable support for the community
mediation field. Some provide a broad range of
types of assistance; others are more specialized.
Some are increasing their roles in the field, 
while others are cutting back their efforts and
essentially passing the torch to newer
organizations. The major organizations are 
reviewed briefly below. 

National Association for Community Mediation 

In the spring of 1993, 23 community mediation
centers joined together to form the National
Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM). 
The aim of the organization "is to support 
the maintenance and growth of community-based 
mediation programs and processes and encourage 
the development and sharing of resources."[1] 
The Hewlett Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, 
and others provided grant support to enable 
NAFCM to begin its work. 

As of spring 1996, NAFCM's membership included more
than 200 programs, representing approximately
10,000 volunteer mediators. Members represent more
than 40 states. NAFCM publishes a newsletter, the 
NAFCM News, that reports on the work of the 
organization. The Association has received funding 
from AmeriCorps so that local community mediation
programs can train AmeriCorps members in conflict
resolution skills. 

NAFCM seeks to encourage a range of values
associated with community mediation, including 
the use of well-trained community volunteer 
mediators who represent the diversity of the 
community and who are not restricted based on 
academic or professional credentials; the 
encouragement of the transformative, relational 
dimension of mediation; and the use of conflict
resolution skills of community mediation programs
for the facilitation "of community dialogue and decision
making around issues of resource use and social and
community needs."[2] 

NAFCM plans to play a variety of roles, including:
(1) serving as a national clearinghouse for the
community mediation field, (2) maintaining a
national directory and database, (3) developing
financial resources and educating funding sources
regarding the benefits of community mediation, (4)
increasing public awareness of community mediation,
and (5) promoting the interests and values of
programs in the field. In carrying out these tasks,
NAFCM can play a critical role in providing a voice
for the community mediation movement across the
nation. 

American Bar Association 

The American Bar Association's Section of Dispute
Resolution was established in 1993 and had its
origins in the Special Committee on Resolution of 
Minor Disputes, which was developed in the mid-1970s. 
The original Special Committee focused
exclusively on mechanisms for the resolution of
minor civil and criminal matters and placed
attention on the full range of programs dealing
with such disputes, including justice system-based,
community-based, and composite programs. As the
committee's work evolved (and its name dropped the
terms "Special and Minor"), the breadth of 
its topic coverage began to mirror the 
growing range of applications of dispute
resolution (shifting, for example to major civil
cases, negotiated rulemaking in Federal agencies,
etc.). 

Community-based mediation began to receive reduced
attention by the ABA over time in competition with
the numerous other topics of interest to many in
the bar. The evolution in topic emphasis by the ABA
over time is not surprising. First, the community
mediation field had matured by the 1990's and could
continue to grow without intensive ABA attention.
Second, since many of the newer areas of
application involved the predominant use of
lawyers rather than volunteer community members as
community mediators, these areas naturally drew the
interests of many ABA members. 

National Institute for Dispute Resolution 

The National Institute for Dispute Resolution
(NIDR) was established by a consortium of 
foundations (Ford, Hewlett, MacArthur, and 
others) in 1981 in order to foster dispute
resolution experimentation across the nation. 
NIDR has made many contributions to the community
mediation field and continues to be a useful source
of information. NIDR's role has evolved over the
years from funding dispute-resolution innovations
to its current role of supporting the field through
information and convening groups to review major
emerging issues of concern. 

NIDR published its Community Dispute Resolution
Manual: Insights and Guidance from Two Decades of 
Practice in 1991. This report was the product of 
the NIDR Community Justice Task Force composed of 
leaders in the field. The report provides very useful
information about program structure, funding, types
of services, management, and related topics, and it
is strongly recommended for program planners and
administrators. 

NIDR continues to publish an informative
newsletter, NIDR News, and the NIDR Forum, which
includes lengthier articles on important issues 
in the dispute resolution field. These
publications are available for an annual fee. NIDR
has also sponsored special projects of interest to
community mediation programs. For example, 
the Test Design Project sought to develop
a practical and effective methodology for
selecting, training, and evaluating mediators. 
The product of this effort, Performance-Based
Assessment, is discussed further in chapter 5. NIDR
focuses on the full range of topics in the dispute
resolution field, akin to the American Bar
Association Section of Dispute Resolution, and
community dispute resolution is only one of many
NIDR interests. NIDR remains a useful source of
information for those in the community mediation
field. 

Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution 

Members of the Society of Professionals in Dispute
Resolution (SPIDR) represent the broad range of
dispute resolution practice. The society performs a
variety of functions, such as representing the
interests of members in public forums, sponsoring
annual meetings, and the like. SPIDR has focused
considerable attention on the question of
qualifications for dispute resolution
practitioners. In 1995 the SPIDR Commission on
Qualifications published a report entitled Ensuring
Competence and Quality in Dispute Resolution
Practice. The report is the product of two years of
effort by the commission and is examined at length
in the discussion of standards in chapter 5. 

American Arbitration Association 

The American Arbitration Association (AAA) has been
an important force in the dispute resolution field.
The primary focus of the AAA is on business-related
disputes and commercial arbitration. As community 
mediation programs become increasingly involved in 
such topic areas, AAA training and resource materials 
can be very helpful. The AAA developed pioneering 
community mediation programs in Philadelphia and 
in Rochester, New York; these programs were 
briefly described earlier. 

National Institute of Justice 

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) of the U.S.
Department of Justice has supported the community
mediation field in a number of ways. NIJ has
provided bibliographies of materials on
community mediation through its National Criminal
Justice Reference Service. It has supported research
studies and evaluations of community mediation 
efforts provides extensive materials in related 
topic areas. For example, NIJ funds the 
Partnerships Against Violence Network, an 
interagency Internet database with valuable 
information on programs to combat violence, 
including community mediation and school
mediation efforts. 

Academy of Family Mediators 

The Academy of Family Mediators (AFM) has
approximately 3,000 members who are practitioners 
or who are otherwise interested in the family 
mediation field. Family mediators deal with 
many types of family issues, including 
separation, divorce, custody and
visitation issues, adoption, parent/child
conflicts, and related matters. The AFM has 
been active in developing ethical guidelines and
standards for mediator competency and practice,
providing training to practitioners, and serving 
as a valuable clearinghouse and broker of technical
assistance for the family mediation field. 

National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict
Resolution 

For more than a decade, the National Conference on
Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (NCPCR) has
sponsored biennial conferences that have provided 
a forum for discussion of issues regarding 
community dispute resolution. NCPCR was founded 
in 1982 to sponsor periodic conferences that 
stimulate discussions among the diverse group of 
individuals in the peacemaking and conflict 
resolution fields in the United States and 
abroad. The current secretariat for NCPCR is at 
the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution 
of George Mason University (Fairfax, Virginia). The 
board of directors is made up of individuals 
representing many facets of the dispute
resolution field. NAFCM has sponsored community
mediation sessions and held important planning
meetings of its leadership at NCPCR meetings. 

Statewide Program Assistance 

As the community mediation field has matured, a
number of statewide organizations have played an 
increasingly important role in program support. 
Two primary types of organizations provide such statewide
assistance: (1) state associations of programs and
(2) state governmental agencies, including those
that are designed specifically to assist community
mediation programs and those that provide services
to such programs as part of more general services
to a broad array of dispute resolution mechanisms. 

Statewide programs provide a wide variety of
valuable services to local community mediation
programs, including: (1) encouraging jurisdictions
that do not have programs to consider developing
them and assisting these jurisdictions with
strategies for program development, (2) directly
providing funding or assisting local programs in
obtaining funding, (3) delivering technical
assistance and training to local programs, (4)
sponsoring conferences and other meetings in which
programs can explore major issues
confronting them and solutions to problems, and (5)
providing forums for the discussion of standards
and qualifications. 

Examples of such programs are presented in the
following sections, and a number of states that 
have more than one type of program are discussed 
to illustrate how the various programs can play
complementary roles. For example, Massachusetts has
a statewide association, a statewide court-based
community mediation program, and a statewide office 
of mediation; New York has both a statewide
association and a statewide court-based mediation
program. Substantial variations occur across states
in the mechanisms available for assisting community
mediation programs. 

State Associations of Programs 

Associations of community mediation programs have
emerged in a number of states to support the
interests, growth, and consolidation of programs. 
The range of services provided by such associations 
vary from holding periodic conferences and
representing the programs' interests in the state's
legislature and other forums to performing these
functions plus a broad range of training, technical
assistance, clearinghouse, and related
functions. A number of examples of the work of
state associations are provided here to illustrate
the types of services provided by state
associations and to encourage programs to consider
developing such associations if they do not already
exist in their state. 

New York State Association of Community Dispute
Resolution Centers 

The New York State Association of Community Dispute
Resolution Centers, Inc., provides an interesting
example of a state association. This association
was established in 1985 to promote the use and
public awareness of community mediation programs 
in New York State. In addition to the routine
functions of a membership association, the New York 
State Association also sponsors a number of programs
under contract to state agencies and others. For
example, since 1989 the association has had a
contract with the New York State Division of
Housing and Community Renewal to conduct a 
Mobile Homes Mediation Program. The community 
dispute settlement centers that are members of 
the association are assigned cases in their 
jurisdictions involving disputes between tenants 
and owners of mobile-home parks. Programs mediate 
or conciliate approximately 500 such cases 
across the state each year. 

Similarly, beginning in 1985 the Department of
Special Education contracted with the association
to fund the Special Education Mediation Program.
Local community dispute resolution centers mediate
disputes between parents and school districts over
the delivery of educational services to children
with disabilities. In 1993 the New York State
Commission on the Quality of Care for the Mentally
Disabled began a pilot program with the association
to facilitate the work of the commission's
"Surrogate Decision-Making Panels." These panels
decide whether mentally disabled individuals 
in state facilities can decide for themselves
regarding needs for nonemergency medical procedures
or whether a surrogate or the panel must make such 
decisions. 

The association is also exploring opportunities for
community dispute resolution center personnel to
provide training to state agency staff in conflict
resolution skills. 

Massachusetts Association of Mediation Programs and
Practitioners 

The Massachusetts Association of Mediation Programs
and Practitioners (MAMPP) was founded in 1983 and is 
a not-for-profit organization that supports the
growth of mediation in Massachusetts. MAMPP is
funded by membership dues, foundations, training 
revenues, and individual donors. 

MAMPP provides various kinds of assistance to 
its 29 member programs in Massachusetts. The
association serves as an information clearinghouse 
for programs throughout the State. The association 
also sponsors professional development workshops 
dealing with emerging issues such as the role of 
diversity in conflict management. MAMPP sponsors a 
periodic seminar dealing with training, internship, 
and other opportunities in the mediation field. 
In addition, MAMPP holds statewide conferences to 
provide a forum for program administrators, staff, 
and mediators to discuss topics of concern. 

The MAMPP newsletter is published quarterly and
presents articles on topics of interest to community
mediation programs, a forum section for debates on
controversial issues, and a detailed calendar of
upcoming events and announcements. 

The association's annual conference includes
workshops addressing the broad range of topics of 
interest to the field (such as school-based mediation,
environmental mediation, family mediation, ethical 
issues in dispute resolution, and qualifications 
and standards). 

Mediation Network of North Carolina 

The Mediation Network of North Carolina serves the
24 community dispute settlement centers in the State.
The network is funded from a number of sources,
including individual and program membership dues, 
grants from the North Carolina bar plan for 
Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts (IOLTA), and
foundations. 

The Mediation Network provides a wide range of
services to North Carolina programs, including
advocacy for funding from the legislature, 
technical assistance, training, conferences, 
and publications. Mediation programs in the 
State are very active. Approximately 16,000
interpersonal disputes are referred to the 
programs annually (roughly one-half from the 
State district courts). In addition, programs 
are active in working on victim/offender mediation, 
school mediation, family mediation, public disputes 
resolution, group facilitation, and related topics.

The network provides technical assistance to
existing centers and to planners of new programs.
It also offers training courses and also links
interested parties to training programs offered 
by individual programs. The topics of training
seminars range widely and include mediation, group
facilitation, school conflict resolution, family 
mediation, conflict resolution in the workplace, 
and other topics. Some of the training courses 
offered by the network are quite intensive. 
For example, in 1996 the network sponsored two 
institutes on developing and implementing
school-based conflict resolution and peer mediation
programs. The institutes involved 30 hours of
training for school personnel over five-day
periods. 

The network sponsors the biennial Southeastern
Mediation Conference, which addresses a very 
broad array of issues. Workshops were conducted 
in each of the following general topic areas at the 
Network's most recent conference: community
mediation, family mediation, public disputes,
schools, youth and violence prevention, business
and commercial disputes, statutorily-based conflict 
resolution programs (such as mediated settlement 
conferences, and State district court child custody 
mediation programs), and general issues such as 
ethics, certification, mediation models, and 
measuring success. Workshops address relatively 
fine-grained issues in each topic area. 
For example, in the family mediation topic 
area eight separate workshops are being 
planned to address such specific issues as
"getting past impasse in family mediation," "the
role of the attorney when representing clients 
in divorce mediation," and so on. The level of
sophistication of topic coverage at the network's
conferences provides a useful measure of the
growing maturity of the community mediation field. 

The network publishes a 16-page newsletter, The
North Carolina Mediator, twice each year. The
newsletter includes articles on topics of interest
to North Carolina programs, updates on
individual State programs and legislation,
reprinted articles from other statewide
associations and similar groups, book reviews, and
a calendar of forthcoming activities. The Mediation
Network has also developed a series of conflict
resolution curricular publications addressing 
various age groups (kindergarten through grade 
three; grades four and five; middle school; and 
high school).

The Mediation Network encourages collaboration
among programs on topics of interest. For example,
the network assisted in the formation of the
Victim-Offender Mediation Resource Group.
Numerous programs attend the monthly meetings of
the resource group along with representatives of
the Administrative Office of the Courts and other
agencies. 

Statewide Governmental Programs That Assist
Community Mediation Programs 

A number of States have developed statewide
mechanisms for the support of community mediation
programs. Some of these statewide efforts are 
targeted specifically on community mediation 
programs; others provide services for a broad range 
of dispute resolution programs (commercial 
arbitration, major civil litigation case 
evaluation, and so on) in addition to community 
dispute resolution efforts. Some of the statewide 
governmental programs are able to provide at 
least limited funding support for mediation 
programs in addition to other services; others 
provide technical assistance, training, and
related services but have no funding available for
programs. This section provides examples of these
various types of statewide governmental support
mechanisms. 

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 

The New York State Community Dispute Resolution
Centers Program (CDRCP) was established by the New York
State Legislature in 1981. The program is part of the
Unified Court System of New York State and is under
the supervision of the Chief Administrative Judge
of the Courts. 

The CDRCP provides partial funding support to
programs serving all 62 counties in the State.
Programs are required to be operated by private
not-for-profit organizations. In FY 1994-95 more
than 100,000 people were involved in the more than
44,000 cases screened as appropriate for referral 
to the New York State community dispute resolution 
centers. These cases resulted in more than 24,000 
conciliations, mediations, and arbitrations in that 
year. Over the 15-year life of the CDRCP program, more 
than 1 million New Yorkers have benefited from program
services. The program's mediation sessions result
in restitution agreements totaling more than $3
million per year. 

The Community Dispute Resolution Centers Program 
is based in Albany and provides many services to 
other programs, including coordination of training 
and technical assistance, provision of monthly 
and quarterly caseload management reports, the 
conduct of periodic monitoring and assessment, 
the sponsorship of conferences, and the conduct 
of public information efforts. 

With regard to training, the CDRCP has established
standards for mediators and certifies trainers to
train mediators in programs across the state. 
The minimum amount of classroom training
required for new mediators is 25 hours, followed 
by observation of one mediation session,
apprenticeship involving the conduct of a minimum
of two mediation sessions under the supervision of
the local program director, and assessment by the
local mediation program. In addition, mediators are
required to complete six hours of continuing
education annually to maintain certification.
Furthermore, mediators must conduct as the lead
mediator or as co-mediator a minimum of three
mediation sessions per year. The CDRCP has
sponsored advanced training on a variety of
specialized topics such as visitation and custody
issues for family mediation. 

The CDRCP sponsors periodic statewide conferences
and has published the proceedings of such conferences.
These meetings are sometimes conducted in
collaboration with the New York State Association
of Community Dispute Resolution Centers (which was
discussed earlier), the State bar, and universities
in the State. Relevant national organizations 
have also been active collaborators in these
conferences. The CDRCP also produces a very useful
newsletter, with articles on topics of relevance to
community mediation and updates on developments in
the various programs across the State. 

Public education efforts by the CDRCP have sought
to increase awareness of community mediation
programs. The program works with the media to
increase knowledge regarding conflict resolution
programs, and personnel of the program also present
speeches in a wide variety of settings. The program
has produced a videotape on the benefits of
mediation that is available at all centers and also
has produced posters for display in courts and
other locations to increase awareness of dispute
resolution services. 

Community Dispute Resolution Program of the
Michigan Supreme Court 

The Community Dispute Resolution Program (CDRP) of
the Michigan Supreme Court was established in 1988 and
provides support for 29 community mediation centers
across the State. As is the case in New York State,
all of the programs are sponsored by nonprofit
community-based organizations. 

In contrast to New York, Massachusetts, North
Carolina, and other States having relatively large
numbers of local programs, Michigan has no
statewide association of programs to provide
independent representation of the interests of
community mediation programs. Plans to develop such
an association have been under consideration since
1989 but have not resulted in the development of an
association. 

The director of the Community Dispute Resolution
Program is based in the State Court Administrator's
Office. The program office provides a variety of
services to programs in the state. 

The CDRP legislation requires that mediators have 
a minimum of 40 hours of training in conflict
resolution techniques, and training must be
approved by the State Court Administrator's Office.
The CDRP offers training for local mediator
trainers to familiarize them with the CDRP training
manual and conducts training summits with trainers 
from across the State to review training design 
and delivery. Workshops are also sponsored by 
CDRP for new program directors to provide them 
with the skills to manage centers and carry out 
strategic planning, public relations, and
related tasks. The CDRP also provides training on
specialized topics such as case intake, the
Americans with Disabilities Act, and
guardianship training. As in the case of other
statewide offices, the Michigan CDRP provides
technical assistance to programs to assist in
program development, implementation, and
diversification of services. The CDRP annual 
report for 1994 notes that some of the new areas 
that programs are moving into include youth
violence prevention, community meeting
facilitation, mediation of guardianship petitions,
will disputes, zoning and property line disputes,
and real estate transactions. The CDRP has
encouraged community mediation centers in the State
to link up to the ConflictNet on the Internet to 
provide a forum for discussion of common issues and 
for e- mail linkages among centers. Twenty centers 
in Michigan are now linked to this service. 

Massachusetts District Court Mediation Program 

The Massachusetts District Court Mediation Program
was established in 1984. The program provides
clearinghouse services and technical assistance 
for mediation programs in Massachusetts that use
volunteer community mediators for cases that come
before the Massachusetts district courts. The
program has also provided technical assistance to
the general public. 

Services provided by the District Court Mediation
Program include helping local communities to
establish mediation programs; sponsoring periodic 
meetings of program directors from across the 
state to discuss emerging issues in the field; 
developing and implementing training programs; 
training trainers, assisting in drafting
legislation relevant to community mediation,
including efforts to raise funds for programs;
extensively working on standards for mediation
programs; participating on relevant local, state,
and national committees (such as the Massachusetts
Trial Court's Standing Committee on Dispute
Resolution) to represent the interests of community
mediation programs; and related activities. 

The District Court Mediation Program has 
published a number of very useful reports. 
Community Mediation in Massachusetts: A Decade 
of Development, provides an overview of program
activities in the State as well as discussions of
emerging legal, ethical, and operational issues. 
A monograph entitled Mediation: An Alternative That
Works, offers detailed information on the nature 
of mediation, an overview of mediation programs in
Massachusetts, a summary of resources available to
mediation programs in the State, and a bibliography
of literature in the field.[3] In 1984 the District
Court Mediation Program, in cooperation with the 
University of Massachusetts Mediation Project, 
cofounded the National Association for
Mediation in Education (NAME). The program's
director has provided mediation training throughout 
the United States and also in Canada, England, 
Australia, and South Africa. 

The Massachusetts District Court Mediation Program
works closely with the Massachusetts Association of
Mediation Programs and Practitioners (MAMPP) in its
many activities. The two organizations have jointly 
conducted conferences of local program personnel to 
assist programs. The director of the Massachusetts 
District Court Mediation Program routinely 
contributes articles about district court program 
activities to the MAMPP newsletter. The two 
organizations also collaborate in seeking to 
influence the development of State governmental 
and bar policies that are favorable to community 
mediation programs. 

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 

The Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and
Conflict Management was established in 1990 to 
support the development of innovative conflict 
resolution mechanisms in the State. The commission 
provides services to all three branches of 
government, in contrast to the governmental 
programs discussed in the preceding section, 
which are located within the judicial branch. 
The commission has 12 volunteer members, selected 
by the Governor, the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme
Court, the senate president, and the speaker of the
Ohio House of Representatives. 

The commission has focused on four primary target
areas--schools, courts, communities, and
government--and has been active in supporting
community mediation programs, school-based conflict
resolution, dispute resolution mechanisms within
State and local government agencies, and related
applications of conflict resolution techniques. 
The types of conflict resolution techniques promoted 
by the commission include conciliation, mediation, 
arbitration, facilitation, collaborative problem 
solving and consensus building, and interest-based
negotiations. 

The commission seeks to encourage the development
of community mediation programs in every county and
major city in Ohio. As part of this work, the
commission is encourages partnerships among community
organizations, local government, the courts, and 
schools, and it also promotes networking among
community mediation programs in the State. The
commission maintains a directory of community mediation
programs and has also developed a six-step strategy
for implementing new mediation centers. The
commission sponsors training and informational
seminars and has also developed a training
videotape indicating techniques for conducting
mediation sessions. In addition, the commission has
worked closely with the Ohio Supreme Court to
foster the development of mediation programs within
the courts. The commission has cosponsored the work
of a trainer who has traveled to small and medium-
sized courts across the State and trained
approximately 100 volunteers to handle selected
civil and criminal matters through mediation. The
commission has also worked on the development of
mediation mechanisms for juvenile assault cases in
one urban court. 

The Ohio Commission has been very active in
encouraging conflict resolution training in the
schools of Ohio. It has prepared documents on how
to establish such programs, has conducted and
evaluated a peer mediation demonstration project in
20 schools, and has prepared Publication lists on
curricular materials and a directory of Ohio
schools with conflict management programs. 

The commission has also developed materials
instructing State and local governmental officials
regarding options for dealing with conflicts that
affect their agencies. In addition, the commission
provides mediation and facilitation services for
local and State officials confronting conflicts
regarding policy development and implementation.
The Ohio Commission publishes a newsletter
entitled Resolution, a wide variety of other
reports and documents.

Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution of the
Supreme Court of Hawaii 

The chief justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii
established the Program for Alternative Dispute
Resolution in 1985, and in 1989 the legislature
institutionalized this program and renamed it 
the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution. 
The original program was funded by the National
Institute for Dispute Resolution (along with 
three other "State offices of mediation" in
Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Minnesota). Twenty
such State offices are now in operation across 
the nation, and they have broad mandates
encourage development of dispute resolution
mechanisms as well as provide dispute resolution
services for critical disputes within their states.

The Hawaii Center has four primary missions: (1) 
to assist in the design of dispute resolution
mechanisms for all three branches of government at
the State and local level, (2) to assist the
government in the mediation or facilitation of
complex litigation and public policy disputes, (3)
to promote alternative dispute resolution
innovations through training and public education,
and (4) to manage the State's funding program for
community mediation centers. 

The center supports a wide range of dispute
resolution programs for the judicial branch 
of government, including statewide
court-annexed (mandatory but nonbinding)
arbitration, family court mediation and settlement
conferences, landlord/tenant mediation, mandatory
small-claims mediation, and an appellate case
conference program. 

The center has also been working with Dr. Mark
Umbreit, an expert on victim/offender mediation, 
and with the Honolulu Police Department to 
design a program to divert defendants charged 
in the district court with misdemeanor theft 
or property damage offenses to mediation (with 
the consent of the complainant). A working group 
has developed a set of restrictions
on the types of defendants eligible for diversion
(including having not more than one prior
misdemeanor conviction and no felony convictions,
no evidence of current extensive substance abuse,
and related factors). 

The Hawaii Center manages the State's funding
program for the six Hawaiian community mediation
centers. Mediation Centers of Hawaii (MCH) serves 
as the umbrella organization for the State's 
community mediation centers, and the Center 
for Alternative Dispute Resolution provides MCH 
with a purchase-of-services contract.
MCH in turn funds individual centers using a
performance-based formula. The state provided MCH
with a $499,588 contract in FY 1994. This contract
represented more than two-thirds of the total
Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution budget of
$705,252. 

The center has also worked extensively with
executive branch agencies on such efforts as the
State Water Commission Mediation Program and
planning for dispute resolution mechanisms for the
Department of Land and Natural Resources. 

The center also provides dispute resolution
services for cases referred to it by judges, State
and county elected officials, and State and county
department heads. Center staff or members of the
center's panel of neutral third parties provide
dispute resolution services. The Center has
provided services for a broad array of lawsuits and
public policy disputes, including helicopter noise
and safety regulations disputes; Hurricane Iniki
insurance cases; tropical forestry controversies;
natural resource, environmental, and siting issues;
and public utilities infrastructure issues. 

Local Programs Providing Extensive Technical
Assistance and Training 

Many community mediation programs provide extensive
technical assistance and training services to
program planners and administrators in the United 
States and abroad. Each issue of the NIDR News 
includes a guide that lists training and technical 
assistance resources in the field. The programs 
are categorized by region of the country and 
include selected community mediation programs 
as well as organizations devoted solely or 
primarily to training and technical assistance. 
NIDR does not screen programs listed on the 
basis of the quality of their services, and 
each organization pays for the publication of 
a description of its services. Nearly 50 
resources were listed in the January/February 
1996 issue of NIDR News. 

The types of services provided by local programs
vary. For example, the Community Board Program of 
San Francisco provides training and technical 
assistance in the following topic areas: (1) basic 
and advanced mediation and conflict resolution 
training, (2) the development of school-based 
conflict resolution and peer mediation programs, 
(3) conflict management in the workplace, 
(4) the development of conflict resolution and 
peer mediation programs in juvenile facilities, 
(5) planning and development services
for new community mediation programs, and (6)
training for neighborhood leaders in communication
and problem solving. 

The Community Board Program also publishes Dispute
Resolution Access, a periodic guide to research and
information in the community mediation field. The
guide provides brief reviews of documents in a
variety of categories (such as qualifications,
criminal justice, domestic mediation, mediation
theory, and mediation training) as well as
interviews with leaders in the field. 

The New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution
(NMCDR) is also a prominent provider of national
technical assistance and training services and has
prepared numerous documents for community
mediation programs. In 1995 the New Mexico Center
sponsored training seminars on the following
topics: (1) school mediation (the center has
developed a widely used model for implementing
school mediation at elementary and secondary
schools), (2) parent/child mediation, 
(3) mediating multiparty youth disputes 
(this institute deals with intergroup and 
gang-related disputes), (4) conflict
resolution and prejudice reduction for at-risk
youth, and (5) advanced school mediation. 

In addition, NMCDR provides custom-designed
technical assistance and training for nonprofit
organizations, governmental agencies, schools,
businesses, and others. Some of the publications
prepared by the New Mexico Center include: (1)
National Resource Directory for Youth Mediation, 
(2) Implementation and Training Guide for Student
Mediation in Elementary Schools (an additional
document addresses secondary schools), (3)
Mediation and Conflict Resolution for Gang-Involved
Youth, and (4) Implementing Mediation in Youth 
Corrections Facilities. 

Urban Community Mediators (UCM) in Dorchester,
Massachusetts, whose roots can be traced to the
Urban Court Program, one of the original
neighborhood justice centers in the United States,
places a priority on preparing its volunteer
mediators to become mediation trainers. UCM has
created a "career" track for trainers that includes
apprentice assistant, coleader, and lead trainer
roles. More than 30 mediators are involved in
training activities, which are seen as a way to
build and spread much-needed peacemaking skills 
in this diverse urban neighborhood and to raise
revenue for an organization that still must
struggle for every operational dollar it can
obtain. 

Conclusion 

The community mediation field has benefited from
the training and technical assistance services 
and funding programs of many national, State, 
and local organizations. The work of these 
organizations is reviewed in this chapter.
The recently developed National Association for
Community Mediation was working to ensure that
programs across the nation have necessary support
available to them. 

Endnotes 

1. NAFCM press release dated November 11, 1994. 

2. Bradley, S., and M. Smith, "NAFCM: Looking
Toward the Next Century," NIDR News
(November/December 1995). The meaning
of the term "transformative" in the context of
mediation is discussed at length in chapter 1. 

3. Davis, A., Community Mediation in Massachusetts:
A Decade of Development, Massachusetts District
Court. Davis, A., Mediation : An Alternative 
That Works, Massachusetts District Court. 

------------------------------

Chapter 4 

Assessing the Impact of Programs on the Quality of
Justice and Related Measures 

------------------------------

Key Points

o Community mediation programs seek to achieve a
variety of aims. One of the central goals sought by
programs is the delivery of high-quality justice to
disputants. Quality of justice can be assessed in a
number of ways, and the complexities involved in
defining and measuring the quality of justice are
reviewed in this chapter.

o Research studies have measured the quality of
justice delivered by community mediation centers in
various ways, including assessments of: 

- disputants' satisfaction with the process and
with community mediators;
 
- disputants' perceptions about the fairness of the
process;
  
-disputants' satisfaction with the terms
of the agreement; and
  
-the stability of dispute settlement over time.

o A number of studies have compared court case
processing and community mediation program case
processing. These studies are reviewed in this
chapter. Such studies often report that community
mediation programs achieve superior outcomes 
when compared with adjudication for the types 
of matters handled by the programs. This 
is particularly true for measures of 
disputant perceptions of the process and 
agreements, perceived fairness, and related
perceptions. Data regarding the stability of
settlements over time favor mediation but are 
more equivocal.

o Community mediation centers have had very limited
impacts on overall court caseloads and associated
costs. A University of North Carolina Institute of
Government study reported that one program studied
by the institute appears to have significantly
reduced the number of court trials in its
jurisdiction based upon a comparison with a matched
county that lacked a mediation program. The
researchers noted that in order to achieve such
impacts, programs must have highly effective court
case referral mechanisms and must process a
significant proportion of cases that are
technically eligible for mediation.

o Much remains to be learned about the advantages
and disadvantages of various dispute resolution
mechanisms. Additional rigorous studies 
comparing community mediation programs with court 
case processing are needed to further
understand their comparative effectiveness in
addressing disputant needs and resolving conflict.
Many studies have dealt with newly developed
programs, but it is particularly important to
assess the processes and outcomes of mature,
institutionalized community mediation programs.
Such programs may demonstrate outcomes
that are even more favorable than those in many
existing studies, but it is also possible that
bureaucratization, large caseloads, and related
factors may lead to a reduction in the quality of
case processing over time.

o Community mediation centers typically process
cases more rapidly than the courts. This is not 
surprising since the court system is burdened 
with the vast bulk of the caseload, while 
mediation centers handle only a small, select 
portion of the total.

------------------------------

Complexities Involved in Assessing the Quality of
Justice 

A wide variety of procedures have evolved to settle
disputes, and earlier sections of this report have
discussed the primary features of common dispute
settlement procedures such as conciliation,
mediation, and arbitration. The task of assessing
the relative "quality of justice" of differing
dispute-processing mechanisms is obviously a
difficult one and, at a minimum, requires some
agreement on the major components of "quality." 

One simple approach to the problem would be to
argue that high-quality justice is possible 
only when a particular process is made available 
to disputants. In the United States, for example, 
one could argue that high-quality justice 
requires at a minimum the provision of 
"due process" to disputants (including such 
features as speedy, public hearings before
impartial dispute resolvers, the opportunity to 
be informed of the nature and cause of the
accusation and to confront witnesses, and to have
professional legal assistance). A person highly
committed to the Anglo-American adversarial system 
of justice presumably could assert that 
high-quality justice is not possible without 
these provisions. Such an approach would put an 
end to the search for ways of defining the "
quality of justice" by suggesting at the outset 
that only one set of processes can yield
high-quality justice. Such an assumption is highly
dubious, and this approach is clearly inappropriate
if one wants to compare without bias two different
types of dispute processing in terms of the quality
of justice rendered. Instead, it is necessary to
examine the common aims sought by both community
mediation programs and adjudication as systems of
dispute settlement, and then to compare their
achievements based on these dimensions. 

Four major elements of "quality of justice" are
commonly sought regardless of the type of procedure
used: 

(1) Precision in bringing out relevant facts.
Thibaut and Walker have explored this dimension in
comparisons of the adversarial system of justice
and the inquisitorial system common in Western
Europe.[2] 

(2) Consistency so that relatively similar outcomes
occur for similar cases. This concern is greater
for adjudication, in which decisions are made, than
for mediation, in which disputants fashion their
own agreements. Mediators have limited options for
constraining variability in outcomes, and they only
intervene when gross injustices appear likely to
take place. 

(3) Disputant satisfaction with the process and
outcomes, and beliefs that they are fair.[3] 

(4) Compliance by disputants with the judgments or
settlements produced by the dispute-processing
approach.[4] 

Numerous secondary qualitative elements of justice
exist, including the understandability of the process, 
the adequacy of opportunities for participation by
parties in the case, and the potential impacts of
dispute processing on social justice. One
particularly interesting additional dimension of
the "quality of justice" is discussed by Bush and
Folger in their 1994 book The Promise of Mediation.
Bush and Folger examine the "transformative" potential 
of mediation; this concept is discussed at length in 
chapter 5.[5] Jean Sternlight, Director of Education and 
Research for the Florida Dispute Resolution Center, 
briefly described the concept in a review of Bush and
Folger's book: 

"Transformation," as defined by the authors, is a
process of moral development by which individuals
move toward both greater "empowerment" and greater 
"recognition" of others' situations. "Empowerment" 
is a type of self-advancement or growth, by which 
the individual achieves a better understanding of 
their ability to control their own destiny. 
"Recognition" means acknowledgment of the interests, 
needs, wants, and perhaps, rights of others. 

A number of the studies reported in this chapter
provide clues about the transformative power of
mediation: these studies provide information
regarding changes in reported understanding of the
other party, changes in fear and anger at the other
party, and related empirical measures. Further
intensive research on transformative measures will 
be needed over time. Frances Wright Henderson, 
Director of the Orange County, North Carolina, 
Dispute Settlement Center, has demonstrated the 
subtlety of such transformative qualities of 
mediation by noting, "What our mediators often 
observe during a mediation . . . is a
transformative moment. Maybe it is simply a still
second when one side has heard the other for the
first time. Maybe it is the relief of moving away
from what seemed to be an impasse. Maybe it is a
time of growth." The measurement of such outcomes
is obviously challenging, but research on these
issues is important and will be likely to increase
in coming years. Many observers feel that it is the
potentially transformative qualities of mediation
that draw volunteer mediators to participate in
programs, and similarly, these qualities may be of
great interest to disputants who elect to have
their dispute mediated. 

The first two elements listed, precision and
consistency, are also quite difficult to measure,
and relatively little research has been conducted
on them. Little is known about the degree to which
different dispute- processing procedures uncover
the relevant facts. The Thibaut and Walker studies,
and related research in that tradition, have
documented the difficulties of assessing the
precision of different processes.[6] Similar
problems occur for the assessment of consistency,
and increased concern for consistency in
adjudication has surfaced in recent years with the
development of various sentencing guideline schemes
designed to constrain and structure discretion to
improve the consistency of case outcomes. 

In contrast, the elements of disputant satisfaction
and compliance with agreements and judgments have
been repeatedly assessed in research studies, and a
number of studies have compared mediation and
adjudication case processing using these
dimensions. This chapter focuses on these measures
as the primary indicators of quality of justice. 

Finally, especially when assessing mediation,
dispute resolution rates (that is, the proportion
of mediation cases reaching agreement either 
before or after hearings) must be considered 
in addition to measuring satisfaction or
compliance. Court cases that proceed to trial
inevitably result in some sort of decision by 
the judge. In contrast, the voluntary nature of
mediation results in only a portion of cases
reaching any disposition. Before considering 
the quality of justice rendered by mediation 
agreements, it is necessary to determine what
proportion of cases in fact reach any agreement 
at all.

------------------------------

Additional Data Regarding Dispute Resolution Rates 

Data similar to the Florida program statistics on
overall caseload performance are available for the
Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles neighborhood
justice centers.[8] These three programs held
hearings in only 35 percent of all cases as
compared with 55 percent of cases in the five
Florida programs. The 82 percent rate of agreements
reached at hearings is almost identical to the 
81 percent achieved in Florida's programs. The
evaluators found that 17 percent of the programs'
total caseloads were resolved before a hearing
occurred, perhaps due to the neighborhood justice
centers' efforts to contact disputants by telephone
to attempt to arrange a settlement. Overall, the
combination of cases resolved at hearings (29
percent of the programs' overall case intake) with
cases resolved prior to hearings (17 percent of
overall cases) results in an estimate that the
three neighborhood justice centers achieved case
resolution in approximately 45 percent of the cases
reaching them. The single largest source of case
attrition for these programs is caused by
respondents' refusals to participate in hearings or
the inability of the programs to locate respondents
(1,297 cases fell in these two categories). Persons
advancing the argument that mediation centers extend 
the reach of social control of the State may be 
interested in these data. Respondents appear to exercise 
their right to refuse participation quite readily; 
an additional group of disputants agree to participate 
in hearings and then become no-shows or cancel the
hearing (623 cases in the sample). Such data are,
of course, less heartening to persons who seek
efficiency in case resolution or to persons who
believe that program services are beneficial but
can only help people if they participate. Some
proportion of no-show cases may be due to the
disputants resolving their conflict on their own
prior to conduct of the hearing; the act of
scheduling the hearing may serve as an important
catalyst for such settlements. 

------------------------------

Studies of Disputant Perceptions of Divorce/Custody
Mediation 

Pearson's 1982 study of divorce mediation in Denver
provides a favorable view of mediation when
compared with court case processing in terms of 
participant satisfaction.[22] Though the Denver 
Custody Mediation Project specializes in divorce 
matters involving custody and differs significantly 
from general dispute mediation centers in its type of
caseload, the process of mediation used to serve
clients is very similar to that in community
mediation programs. Pearson conducted follow-up
interviews shortly after mediation sessions and 6
to 12 months following the sessions and found that
satisfaction with mediation was considerably higher
than satisfaction with court case processing at
both points in time. Ninety-eight percent of
disputants having successful mediations (resulting 
in agreements) and 57 percent having
unsuccessful mediations indicated that they were
satisfied with the mediation process when
questioned in the second follow-up period. In
comparison, only 36 percent of disputants in the
control group reported satisfaction with the court
process. Since divorce mediation disputants also
must have contacts with the court to complete
divorce processing, data were also collected
regarding their views of the court. Only 38 percent
of persons having successful mediations and 36
percent of those with unsuccessful mediations were
satisfied with the court process. These findings
mirror those of the Brooklyn study of criminal case
processing. 

Susan Keilitz, Henry Daley, and Roger Hanson of the
National Center for State Courts conducted a study
of divorce mediation programs and court case
processing in four States (Florida, Nevada, New
Mexico, and North Carolina). The study was funded
by the State Justice Institute and was published in
1992. Keilitz, Daley, and Hanson reported that,
"while litigants in the NCSC study view the dispute
resolution process in which they participated as 
basically fair and satisfactory, on most of 
the individual measures of the quality of
the process, mediation is rated more favorably than
is traditional court litigation."[23] 

-------------------------------

Perceptions of Fairness in Small Claims Case
Processing 

In their study of small claims mediation in Maine,
McEwen and Maiman also collected data regarding
perceptions of fairness and found that mediation
participants viewed their settlements as fair
somewhat more often than did court case clients (67
percent versus 59 percent).[29] They further
analyzed the data on perceptions of fairness for
various categories of cases, defined by the
percentage of the original claim awarded in the
settlement or judgment. As might be expected, few
of those plaintiffs or defendants who lost at trial
perceived the judgment to be fair while almost all
of those who won viewed the judgment as fair. In
contrast, 54 percent of plaintiffs receiving no
money after mediation considered the settlement to
be fair, and 67 percent of defendants who agreed to
pay nearly the full amount of the claim considered
the outcome to be fair. McEwen and Maiman also
found that "in mediation it was almost twice as
likely as in adjudication that both parties viewed
the outcome as fair." In 44 percent of the cases,
both parties viewed the outcome as fair following
mediation; by comparison, 24 percent of the
adjudicated cases resulted in both parties viewing
the case outcome as fair. 

------------------------------

Brooklyn Mediation Program Data Regarding the
Stability of Case Settlements

The Davis, Tichane, and Grayson study of the
Brooklyn mediation program collected comparable
data from a control group of court cases using an
experimental design.  The researchers found that 19
percent of mediation complainants reported problems
with the defendant compared with 28 percent of
court case complainants. This difference favors
mediation but is not statistically significant. The
authors found, however, that 62 percent of
complainants perceived that defendant behavior
improved following mediation, while only 40 
percent of court complainants perceived an
improvement in defendant behavior. The defendants
reported that complainants' behavior improved in 63
percent of mediation cases and 61 percent of court
cases. The frequency of criminal justice system
intervention with the disputants during the follow-
up period was virtually identical for both
mediation and court case disputants. The 
police were called in 12 percent of mediation 
cases and 13 percent of court cases, and one 
of the parties was arrested for a crime against
the other in 4 percent of both mediation and court
cases disputants. This lack of a difference may in
part reflect a floor effect among the sample of
cases. The percentages are quite low for both the
court and mediation and may represent a virtually
irreducible level of conflict likely to emerge,
particularly in the serious crime cases handled by
the Brooklyn program.

The Brooklyn study also included a number of
attitudinal measures that suggest benefits to
complainants deriving from mediation. The
researchers asked mediation and court complainants
how much they feared revenge from the defendant and
how angry they were with the defendant. They found
that, in each case, roughly twice as many court
case complainants feared revenge or felt anger than
did the mediation complainants. The mediation
hearings were also found to result in increased
understanding of the defendants' motives by the
complainants. Such outcomes are significant;
reduced fear and anger can presumably greatly
affect the quality of life of disputants and may
provide clues about the transformative nature of
mediation discussed by Bush and Folger.

------------------------------

Comparing Compliance: Small Claims Mediation
Settlements versus Court Judgments 

The Maine small claims court mediation study
provides striking findings of improved compliance
following mediation for the minor monetary matters
handled by the program. The relevant data are
presented in Exhibit 7. They report that 71 percent
of successfully mediated cases resulted in payment 
in full by defendants, compared with only 34 
percent of court judgments. Interestingly, 53 
percent of defendants whose cases were mediated but 
did not result in agreement paid their court 
judgments in full. This finding suggests the 
possibility of a latent positive effect of 
mediation in small claims cases even when the 
mediation session does not successfully result 
in an agreement. (Twenty-one percent of court 
defendants made partial payments, compared with 
16.5 percent of mediation defendants who reached 
agreement; 45 percent of court defendants failed to 
pay anything, compared with 13 percent of mediation 
defendants.) One possible explanation for these 
findings is the great differences among mediation 
and adjudication defendants' views of their 
obligation to pay. While more than two-thirds 
of mediation defendants reported some or a 
strong legal (and moral) obligation to pay, 
fewer than one-third of court defendants felt 
the same way. The researchers argue that the 
act of entering into an agreement fashioned by 
the parties themselves leads to this greater 
sense of obligation.

Source: McEwen and Maiman, "Small Claims Mediation
in Maine: An Empirical Assessment," Maine Law
Journal (1981). The finding is a fascinating one; 
in theory, a robed judge making a court judgment 
is the high-water mark of legal obligations in 
American society, and yet only a minority of 
defendants in the Maine sample felt that such 
a judgment incurred in them a legal obligation. 
The defendants in the cases often did not feel 
that the judgment was fair and reflective of a 
full airing of their case, and hence did not 
accord the judgments with the legal legitimacy 
expected of them by society. 

A number of additional factors may contribute in
part to the greater likelihood of compliance
following mediation, including the fact that
mediation led to dollar settlements that were
somewhat lower than court judgments. In addition,
some level of self-selection by parties into
mediation was possible. Both issues are discussed
by McEwen and Maiman and are unlikely to account
for more than a portion of the difference between
the outcomes of mediation and adjudication in
Maine. An interesting aspect of the Maine findings
is that the Maine researchers found greater
differences in compliance following mediation than
they did in the attitudes of the parties; most of
the preceding studies found substantial differences
in the perceptions of mediation and court
disputants but smaller differences in compliance.
One factor influencing this difference is that the
Maine study dealt with minor civil matters that
could be settled with a single act, payment of
money, rather than by complex behavioral changes
among disputants. The payment of money is a 
highly unambiguous task compared to stopping 
harassment of another party, and the obligation 
may be more strongly felt to meet this "easier" 
responsibility. 

------------------------------

Additional Studies Dealing With the Costs of
Mediation 

A 1978 study by University of Southern California
researchers attempted to estimate the costs 
of court case processing in the Dorchester,
Massachusetts, District Court and arrived at 
an estimate of $148 per disposed case.[42] 
In comparison, the 1980 evaluation of three
neighborhood justice centers estimated costs per
case in the Atlanta project at $142 per resolved
case and $62 per case referral.[43] Individual case
costs were considerably higher in the Kansas City
and Los Angeles projects, since they have smaller
caseloads but fixed overall costs comparable with
the Atlanta project's ($172 and $202 per referral
and $309 and $589 per case resolved, respectively,
for Kansas City and Los Angeles). A 1977 study by
McGillis and Mullen noted that the range of project
costs per case referral in a six-project sample of
dispute resolution programs varied from 
approximately $20 to $300 per referral.[44] 
The reasons for such per case cost variation are 
uncertain, but some major factors likely to 
influence costs include variations in program 
sponsorship (public versus private), case volume, 
staffing, and hearing length. In addition, costs 
are likely to vary substantially depending on 
the types of cases handled (with costs likely 
to increase as cases become more complex). 

------------------------------

Community mediation programs seek to achieve a
variety of aims, including delivering high-quality
justice to disputants and providing services
efficiently. This chapter provides a discussion 
of the complex issues that arise in assessing
programs' achievement of these aims and presents
research findings regarding program accomplishments
and problems.[1] In some topic areas, a number of
very informative research studies are available; in
other topic areas, useful research is sparse. The
Fund for Research on Dispute Resolution supported
many useful studies during its operation from 1987
to 1991, and a number of those studies are
discussed in this and the following chapter. 
The National Institute of Justice and the State 
Justice Institute have also funded informative
evaluations dealing with dispute resolution
mechanisms. The State Justice Institute provided
the National Center for State Courts with a grant
in 1994 to develop a model evaluation guide for
dispute resolution programs, and the availability
of the guide may encourage increased research 
in this field. 

Assessing the Quality of Justice 

The concept of the "quality of justice" is an
elusive one, and yet the goal of improving the
quality of justice provided to disputants is a
central stated aim of virtually all community
mediation programs. In the case of mediation, 
the predominantly voluntary nature of the process 
and the specific processes used are assumed to
encourage a broad-ranging discussion of the issues
underlying the conflict. In contrast, a number of
features of adjudication, such as rules of
evidence, the use of attorneys as intermediaries,
and the severe time limitations typical of lower-
court hearings serve to inhibit any discussions of
underlying issues severely. Proponents of mediation
predict that agreements fashioned by the disputants
themselves reflecting the full range of issues in
dispute will result in more durable case
settlements and greater satisfaction with the
process by parties to the dispute. 

To the extent that individual programs find it
difficult to reduce court caseloads or court costs
(an issue discussed later in this chapter), they
will be increasingly assessed in light of their
capacity to offer an improved quality of justice.
Funding decisions may turn on a program's ability
to argue persuasively that, for the types of cases
it handles, the outcomes for disputants are
superior to those arising from court processing.
The specific questions explored in this section
include:

o What are the varying conceptions of the "quality
of justice"?

o How can "quality" be measured?

o What empirical evidence currently exists
regarding the "quality of justice" provided by
dispute resolution programs? 

Where possible, the relative quality of outcomes 
of community mediation programs and the courts is
compared. The findings reported in this section are
relevant to mediation and arbitration in general
and to their relationship with formal adjudication.
The bulk of studies of community mediation programs
have focused on programs offering mediation, and
the research findings in this section reflect this
emphasis. 

Major Available Measures of the Quality of Justice 

Three major types of data that are available from
research studies will be reviewed to assess the
comparative quality of justice of mediation
programs versus the courts: (1) dispute resolution
rates, (2) disputant satisfaction with the process
and outcomes and perceptions of their fairness, and
(3) disputants' compliance with settlements.
Relevant measures and available data sources for
each type of information are discussed here in
turn. 

Dispute Resolution Rates 

Dispute resolution rates are simply measures of the
proportion of mediation program cases that reach
agreement either before or after hearings. While
most mediation programs take steps to gather such
information, the available data are typically not
detailed concerning the types of conflicts 
involved, the types of agreements reached, 
the disputants' views of the adequacy of the 
agreements, and similar issues. 

Considerable variations exist in the probable
reliability of such data, especially in regard to
case settlements prior to hearing. Complainants who
have decided not to pursue their grievance to the
point of a hearing for any number of reasons may
inform the project that the matter is settled
simply to stop the repeated contacts from project
personnel. Project intake workers may also perceive
that a problem is solved by "selectively hearing"
the reasons given by the complainant for
discontinuing the claim. In short, while project
data on dispute resolution rates are the most
commonly available measures, they are somewhat
limited in value because of the probable disparity
in definitions of terms and the complexities of
interpreting the data. 

The simple achievement of an agreement at a
hearing, while significant, can represent 
anything from a highly comprehensive 
and sensitive settlement reflecting
an effort to solve the entire range of problems
embedded in the dispute to an agreement by the
parties regarding a marginal issue that may have
some limited importance but leaves the vast bulk 
of the conflict unresolved. Some programs strongly
advise their community mediators not to settle 
at all costs and discourage the development of
agreements about highly marginal issues solely 
for the sake of an agreement. Other
mediation programs may subtly (and probably
unintentionally) convey the message to community
mediators that one's agreement "batting average" 
is important and may be a determinant of whether 
the community mediators can continue to work with 
the project. Such pressures are inevitable in a 
world in which "successful" case statistics are 
a factor considered by program funders. Virtually 
all programs point with pride to their
accomplishments in settling a high proportion of
cases at hearings.

A number of evaluation studies have calculated the
proportion of mediation hearings that result in
agreements. Program rates of reaching agreements
are quite similar and averaged 88 percent per
program for 12 programs that have been evaluated.[7] 
The projects that provide arbitration in cases 
that do not reach a settlement have the
highest dispute resolution rates because they
impose settlements in virtually all cases in which
disputants cannot agree. These data do not provide
any information on the quality of the agreements
but only indicate if some agreement was reached
(and typically written up and signed by the
parties) prior to the end of the hearing. 

Many projects tend to focus on the proportion of
cases resolved at hearings as a prime indicator of
success and quality in case processing. The figures
reported in evaluations and independently by the
projects are impressive. But it is critical that
these achievements be viewed in the context of the
projects' overall caseloads, rather than simply in
isolation. Considerable case attrition occurs in
all projects before hearings are scheduled, and
typically only a fraction of cases proceed to
hearings. For example, Exhibit 6 presents a summary
of the total caseloads of five Florida dispute-
processing programs. As can be seen from the
exhibit, 93 percent of the Florida cases were
scheduled for hearings, but only 59 percent of
those cases actually proceeded to hearings. Factors
causing this attrition included no-shows at
hearings by complainants, respondents, or both; 
withdrawals of cases by complainants; and 
related causes. While 81 percent of the cases 
having hearings resulted in agreements, cases 
reaching agreement made up only 43.8 percent of 
the total number of cases received because of 
the attrition in cases prior to the time
of hearings. 

The Florida researchers conducted a follow-up
survey 6 to 12 months after the hearings in order
to assess the degree to which conflicts were
resolved. Complainants in Florida reported that
total resolution of the dispute occurred in 52 
percent of the cases having hearings, and either 
total or partial resolution occurred in 75 
percent of cases having hearings. Adjusting 
estimates of overall levels of dispute resolution 
in light of these figures shows that 23 percent 
of the total number of cases received were fully 
resolved and 40 percent were either partially 
or fully resolved following processing by the 
program. The evaluators did not gather any data 
on those cases not proceeding to hearings to 
determine what percentage were resolved prior 
to hearings. 

Court and dispute resolution program case
processing differ greatly and make it difficult to
compare resolution rates between the two. Both 
the courts and mediation projects experience
considerable attrition between case filing and
disposition. The justice system screens cases at 
a variety of levels. Court clerks and prosecutors
routinely refuse the filing of court petitions in a
wide variety of matters because they do not feel
that the cases meet technical charging standards,
the offenses are too minor to warrant court
attention, the office has a policy of not handling
the specific type of matter, and so forth.
Additional attrition occurs at initial court
hearings due to dismissals by judges or withdrawal
of complaints by the complainant. Only a small
proportion of initially filed cases proceed to
trial in America's courts. During the screening
process the justice system at times takes steps to
settle the conflict by arranging for restitution by
one party to the other, or by advising the parties
to stay apart. These conciliatory or dispute
settlement activities tend to be quite invisible;
they are typically not formally recorded in the
case file and simply occur informally and then
result in the cases being marked "dismissed," 
"nolle pros," "adjourned contemplating
dismissal," and similar designations. Judges at
hearings often take steps to negotiate a settlement
to both criminal and civil matters, [9] and
additional case dismissals following hearings may
result from some mediation efforts. In short, the
majority of cases in the typical urban court never
reach a hearing. Once they do, the judge is
empowered to impose a judgment of the matter, 
resulting in 100 percent of cases that are 
adjudicated having dispositions, by definition. 

Community mediation programs also experience a high
rate of attrition. These programs cannot impose a
settlement, and this has resulted in the
development of resolution rate statistics as a
means of assessing program achievements at
hearings. The "apples and oranges" character of the
comparison between mediation and courts on the
global issues of case attrition, proportion of
cases going to hearings, and power to impose a
judgment at hearings makes it difficult to compare
the statistics on case resolution rates with any
precision. More information is needed regarding the
proportion of cases arriving at the courts that
result in a settlement satisfactory to the
disputants at whatever stage of processing. 

Disputant Perceptions of the Process and Agreements

The second major class of data related to the
quality of justice is data on disputant
satisfaction with the fairness of the mediation
process and outcomes. These data are typically
collected in evaluations of dispute mediation
programs and, unlike dispute resolution rates, are
not generally available directly from most
programs. Major measures of this type include
disputant satisfaction with the overall program, 
with the resolution process, with the mediator, 
and with the terms of the agreement, and 
disputant views of mediator and mediation 
process fairness. Some studies also provide 
information regarding the content of agreements. 
Additional perceptual measures collected in 
some studies include assessments of the 
understandability of the mediation process, the
degree of opportunity provided to disputants to
tell their story, and the like. 

A number of researchers of dispute mediation have
gathered data on disputant perceptions of community
mediation programs.[10] In addition, some studies
include data about perceptions of programs that
handle relatively specialized caseloads, including
small claims mediation, [11] divorce mediation,
[12] and child/parent dispute mediation.[13] The
Law Foundation of New South Wales conducted
detailed evaluations of the perceptions of
disputants in three Australian community justice
centers.[14] 

Ideally, the perceptions of dispute resolution
program disputants would be compared to those of
persons whose cases are handled by the courts, in
order to carefully assess the differences between
the two forms of case processing, and the most
rigorous approach to form such a comparison would
be to have disputants randomly assigned to the two
types of forums. Two studies have used this
approach: the Vera Institute of Justice study of
mediation in Brooklyn, New York, and Pearson's 1982
study of divorce mediation.[15] An alternative, and 
less rigorous, approach would be to form a comparison 
court sample by matching existing cases on dimensions 
similar to those predominant in the mediation case 
sample. The Maine small claims study [16] and some 
others have used a less rigorous quasi-experimental 
design and compared mediation cases with cases in 
which mediation was not available.[17] 

A number of studies have sought to measure the
views of disputants regarding mediation case 
processing, and some of these studies have compared 
these perceptions to those of persons whose cases were
handled by the courts. The following subsections
provide a summary of such data and focus on
measures of satisfaction with the process and 
with community mediators, perceptions of the 
fairness of the process, and satisfaction with 
the terms of the agreements or settlements reached. 

Satisfaction with the Process and with Community
Mediators 

A number of researchers have conducted surveys to
measure disputant satisfaction with 
the mediation process and with community 
mediators. For example, Stevens Clarke, Ernest
Valence, and Robyn Mace of the University of North
Carolina's Institute of Government conducted an
extensive evaluation of three mediation programs in
North Carolina (the programs in Durham, Henderson,
and Iredell). Their study was funded by the State
Justice Institute, and their findings were
published in 1992.[18] The researchers reported
that 96 percent of complainants and 90 percent of
respondents in the disputes reported satisfaction
with the mediation process. Ninety-eight percent of
complainants and 100 percent of respondents
reported satisfaction with the performance of
community mediators. 

The study of the Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles
neighborhood justice centers found that 88 percent
of complainants and respondents reported
satisfaction with their overall experience at the
justice center.[19] Eighty-four percent of
complainants and 89 percent of respondents stated
that they were satisfied with the mediation
process; 88 percent of both groups stated that they
were satisfied with their mediator. Similar rates
of satisfaction were also observed by other
projects. For example, Merry and Rocheleau, in
their study of the Children's Hearing Project in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, a service that mediates
between parents and their children, report that 90
percent of disputants indicated that they felt the
mediation process was good.[20] 

Cook, Roehl, and Sheppard also collected data on a 
sample of 66 court cases in Atlanta and Kansas City in 
order to assess the satisfaction of persons whose 
disputes were handled in court. The cases were 
selected to be similar to those processed by the 
mediation centers in those cities. Conclusions based 
on a comparison of the two studies should be qualified,
however, as questions posed to the court case
participants differed significantly from those
asked of mediation participants. But the data do
seem to suggest greater satisfaction on the part of
mediation disputants. While more than 80 percent of
disputants indicated that they were satisfied with
the mediation process and overall experience at the
mediation centers, only 33 percent of court case
participants in the Kansas City sample stated that
their case was handled well by the court (10
percent reported average handling, and 57 percent
said that case handling was poor). In Atlanta, 42
percent rated their court case as having been
handled well, 28 percent average, and 30 percent
poor. Similarly, while 88 percent of mediation
disputants said they were satisfied with their
mediator, only 64 percent of Kansas City and
Atlanta court case disputants said that they were
satisfied with their judge. While these data
suggest that disputants may favor mediation,
conclusions must be qualified by the limits of the
study: the court case sample was small, the study
involved matching cases rather than random
assignment, and the studies used different survey
instruments. 

Two studies have used random assignment of cases 
to compare disputant perceptions of mediation and
adjudication.[21] Davis, Tichane, and Grayson's
study of a mediation program in Brooklyn compared a
sample of 160 mediated criminal cases with 119
control cases. Seventy-three percent of
complainants in mediated cases stated that they
were satisfied with their case outcome compared
with 54 percent of complainants whose case was
handled in court, a difference that is
statistically significant. The comparable
comparison for defendants was 79 percent for
mediation versus 59 percent for court cases. The
study also investigated perceptions of the process
by asking disputants if they felt that their story
"was heard" by the judge or mediator. Ninety
percent of defendants stated that their story was
heard in mediation, compared to only 44 percent in
court cases; 94 percent of mediation complainants
said that their story was heard compared to 
65 percent of control group court complainants. 

McEwen and Maiman's study of small claims mediation
in Maine compared findings regarding mediation case
processing with data from a comparison sample of
court cases that were processed in courts not
offering mediation services.[24] Fifty-seven
percent of mediation participants stated that they
had the opportunity to explore other issues than
the immediate complaint compared with 18 percent of
disputants whose cases were processed through the
courts. Eighty-one percent of mediation clients
felt that the mediator completely or mostly
understood what the dispute was all about compared
with 71 percent of adjudication participants. (This
finding is reminiscent of the Brooklyn data
regarding whether disputants' stories were heard.)
Seventy- nine percent of mediation participants
indicated that they understood everything that was
going on compared with 65 per-cent of persons whose
cases were processed by the courts. Sixty-seven
percent of mediation participants stated that 
they were completely or mostly satisfied with 
their overall experience compared with 54 
percent of court case participants. These 
differences are not as striking as some of the 
preceding findings but are similar in direction. 

McEwen and Maiman reported that when one focuses on 
those cases most likely to benefit from mediation, 
such as those arising out of continuing commercial 
or personal relationships, other differences between
mediation and adjudication become larger. While 80
percent of mediation participants in ongoing
relationships said that they were mostly or
completely satisfied with the overall experience,
65 percent of those mediation parties who had a
one-time interaction or who terminated their
relationship around the time of the dispute were
completely or mostly satisfied. While the typical
dispute mediation center discussed in this report
tends to handle primarily matters among persons
with ongoing relationships, the Maine study
demonstrates a more favorable attitude toward
mediation than court case processing 
even among persons who do not have ongoing
relationships. This finding was not anticipated by
some observers who feel that the only reasonable
area of application for mediation is in disputes
involving persons in continuing relationships. 

The satisfaction levels reported in the above
studies are similar to those in numerous studies of
mediation that do not include court-processing
comparison groups.[25] Overall, empirical studies
of mediation programs have consistently shown high
levels of disputant satisfaction with the hearing
process and community mediators. The findings
emerge from programs that differ considerably, 
and the pattern of results seems robust. 
When compared with court case processing,
disputants consistently appear to view mediations
more favorably than adjudication. 

Disputant satisfaction with mediation seems to be
caused by a number of features of mediation
hearings. Factors that have surfaced in studies
include: (1) mediation was perceived to have helped
solve the problem and improve the relationship
between the complainant and the respondent; (2)
mediation brought out the real issues in the case;
(3) disputants had a say in how mediation came out;
and (4) disputants understood what went on in
mediation. 

Perceptions of Fairness of the Process 

The quality of justice can be measured in a wide
variety of ways. One approach is to define quality
in terms of the provision of minimal "due process"
procedural elements thought to lead to just
decision making. Another approach is to consider
the justice of the outcomes of a process. These
outcomes can presumably be viewed from a variety of
perspectives, including those of the parties of the
dispute, people who deal directly with the parties,
and the society at large. Needless to say, it can
be very difficult to develop a metric to assess the
quality of justice of specific outcomes, especially
when considerations of collective justice are
entered into the equation of measurement. 

In any event, it seems quite clear that if any
process claims to render a high quality of justice,
the disputants whose cases are handled by the
process should view the process as fair.
Presumably, esoteric examples could be generated in
which disputants consistently view a process as unfair
and yet certain outside observers are moved to
label the process as rendering a high quality of
justice. Outside of the scope of such examples,
however, it seems safe to stipulate that there is
something seriously wrong with a justice system
process that is not viewed as fair by parties
processed through it. It is also likely that when
such processes lack legitimacy in the eyes of
disputants, compliance with their decisions 
will be marginal at best. 

A number of studies have sought to assess
disputants' perceptions of the fairness of
mediation hearings and mediators; some of these
studies have compared mediation to the courts.
Davis, Tichane, and Grayson's study of the Brooklyn
mediation center surveyed both complainants 
and defendants to inquire whether they
perceived the judges or mediators to be fair and
whether they perceived their case outcome to 
be fair. While both groups generally felt 
that the judge or mediator was fair, differences 
in perceptions of the fairness of case
outcomes are quite striking when mediation and
court clients are compared. Seventy-seven percent
of complainants and 79 percent of defendants in the
mediation sample perceived the case outcome as fair
compared with 56 percent of complainants and 59
percent of defendants in the court sample. Overall,
the portion of dispute resolution program
participants who found the outcomes fair was
significantly greater than the portion of court
participants who were asked the same question. If a
central goal of the justice system is to deliver
"justice" (as perceived by its clients), then these
findings are important. 

A number of additional studies have assessed
disputant perceptions of fairness of mediation but
have not compared the data to a court sample of
cases. These studies consistently find high rates
of perceptions of fairness. For example, Merry and
Rocheleau's study of the Children's Hearing Project
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found that 95 percent
of parents and 84 percent of children studied in
the research viewed the agreements as fair.[26] 

In summary, disputants are consistently found in
research studies to view the mediation process as
fair. Research by Davis, Tichane, and Grayson
comparing mediation and court case processing
shows significant differences between the perceived
fairness of mediation and court case outcomes for
disputants in the program studied. As in the case
of the research on disputant satisfaction with the
mediation process, the research on perceived
fairness is very favorable to mediation programs. 

Satisfaction with the Terms of the Agreement 

A number of the research studies dealing with
mediation have collected information on the
satisfaction of disputants with the terms of the
agreement reached. The Institute for Social
Analysis study of Neighborhood Justice Center
programs in Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles
reported that 80 percent of complainants and 83
percent of respondents indicated that they were
satisfied with the terms of their agreement. The
Davis, Tichane, and Grayson study did not ask 
disputants directly about the terms of their 
agreement; however, when asked about their 
satisfaction with the case outcome, 73
percent of complainants and 79 percent of
defendants in the mediation sample indicated
satisfaction with the outcome compared with 54
percent of complainants and 67 percent of
defendants in the court sample.[27] The Australian
study of three community dispute centers reported
that 65 percent of disputants at centers indicated
that they were very satisfied and 23 percent
indicated that they were partly satisfied with the
terms of the agreement.[28] 

Davis, Tichane, and Grayson have studied the
provisions included in mediation agreements at the
Brooklyn program. Knowledge of the content of
agreements does not present evidence about the
quality of those agreements and the degree to which
they meet the needs of disputants. It is
informative, however, to review the primary
provisions of agreements to be aware of the types
of obligations being incurred by the disputants.
The most common provision was the ending of
harassment, and 95 percent of the agreements
included such a provision. Thirty-six percent of
agreements placed behavioral restrictions on one 
or both of the parties to the dispute. Thirty-five 
percent of agreements stated that parties would 
use structured methods for handling future 
problems, such as calm discussion or taking the 
matter to court. Twenty-four percent of agreements 
included limitations on interactions between the 
parties, including provisions that the 
defendant or complainant stay away from the 
other party's place of residence or work. 
The Brooklyn program dealt with serious
criminal offenses between acquaintances, and the
pattern of agreement provisions reflects the
primarily criminal nature of the program's
caseload.[30] 

The Florida programs studied by Bridenback handle
mixed caseloads of criminal and civil matters, and the
provisions of the mediation agreements reflect this
greater diversity. Provisions of agreements that
dealt with respondents included disengagement of
contacts between the parties (26 percent),
alteration of past behavior (24 percent), payment
or return of money or property (18 percent),
control of animals (6 percent), development of a
cooperative relationship (5 percent), repair or
service of property (4 percent), domestic
arrangements or child welfare (3 percent),
maintenance of property (3 percent), attendance at
a designated program (2 percent), no obligation
designated (2 percent), and other (8 percent).[31] 

Overall, although only limited data are available,
the available research suggests that disputants are
quite satisfied with the terms of mediated
agreements. 

Measures of the Stability of Dispute Settlement
Over Time 

All community mediation programs seek to develop
case resolutions that will be durable over time and 
that will result in settlement of the matter. A 
number of studies have sought to determine the 
longevity of dispute resolution agreements. 
Relevant measures have included data from official 
records on recontacts by disputants with justice 
system agencies [32] and interviews with disputants 
to determine whether the dispute continued to be
settled. Typical interview questions include
whether or not the disputing parties have abided by
all the terms of the agreement and whether or not
there have been any additional problems with the
other party. Many programs also inquire where
disputants would go if a problem similar to the one
that was mediated arose in the future. Such a
measure provides some indication of the overall
satisfaction of the disputants with the mediation
program. 

As in the case of measures of disputant
satisfaction, the available studies vary
considerably in their use of rigorous comparison
groups. The previously cited Vera Institute of
Justice and Pearson studies provide random
assignment experimental data comparing the
stability of settlements. The other studies provide
lesser degrees of rigor, and some studies present
data only on the durability of mediation
settlements with no comparable court data to
provide a baseline. 

Research studies have assessed the stability of
dispute settlement in a variety of ways, including
searches of official records to determine
recontacts of disputants with the justice system
and surveys of disputants to find out whether the
dispute is settled. The varying measures of long-
term settlement over time each have strengths and
shortcomings. For example, the use of official
arrest records uncovers only those incidents that
come to the attention of the police. Obviously, an
agreement could break down and serious conflicts
could occur between disputants without an arrest
being made. Similarly, self-report data can have
short-comings stemming from hesitancy on the part
of disputants to be candid. Major research findings
regarding the stability of dispute settlement are
presented here. 

The Cook, Roehl, and Sheppard study of neighborhood
justice centers in three cities used follow-up
interviews of disputants six months after case
hearings to determine whether cases were settled.
The majority of both complainants and respondents
stated that they had complied with all the terms of
the agreement, with a smaller number indicating
that they had abided by the terms partially. When
disputants were asked whether the other party had
kept all of the terms of the agreement, more than
two-thirds of both complainants and respondents 
indicated that the other party had kept all of 
the terms of the agreement. Only 28 percent of
complainants and 2 percent of respondents indicated
that they had experienced subsequent problems with
the other party. 

Pearson's 1982 study of divorce mediation provides
information about the compliance of spouses with
the terms of agreements relating to children and to
financial matters. The research found that only 6
percent of parties who experienced successful
mediations reported serious disagreements arising
over their settlement compared with 34 percent of
parties in court cases. In general, relationships
following successful mediation were found to be far
better than those following court processing. It is
unclear however, whether this is a result of the
existing predispositions of the parties, since
long-term follow-up shows that perceptions of
relationships following unsuccessful mediation are
as bad or worse than following court handling of
cases. 

Kelley studied both the short- and long-term impact
of divorce mediation and found that positive short-
term impacts tend to dissipate over time.[33]
Kelley collected data from more than 200 divorcing
couples from the inception of the divorce process
to two years following the divorce. She compared
divorces that were mediated to those proceeding
through the courts. She found that mediation
agreements contained more comprehensive provisions
dealing with child support, custody, and related
matters. Six months before the divorce, parents who
had their cases mediated reported fewer conflicts
compared with the sample of parents who had cases
handled by the courts. At the time of the divorce,
mediation clients reported that they were more
satisfied with the process and the outcome of the
case compared with the court sample, were more in
compliance with their agreements, and had a higher
level of cooperation with their former spouses. 

These benefits did not continue over the long term,
however, and Kelley found that two years following
the divorce, the mediation and court samples were
not significantly different in levels of
cooperation, amounts of conflict, compliance rates,
and related measures. This research provides
valuable information about the potential limits of
durability of mediated settlements. Janet Walker's
research comparing mediated versus court-processed
divorces in England and Wales supports Kelley's
findings: four years after the divorce, couples 
who had their cases mediated were as likely as 
those with court- processed cases to take
divorce-related conflicts to court.[34] Despite 
the lack of differences in many long-term outcomes, 
the short-term benefits of divorce mediation, of
course, could still have been very valuable to
parents and children, since these benefits occurred
during the most traumatic and stressful period of
the marital breakup. In any event, Kelley's and
Walker's research studies make it clear that both
practitioners and policymakers must be cautious and
avoid overpromising the potential long-term
benefits of mediation. 

A number of additional studies have collected data
on the long-term stability of mediation agreements 
but have not provided court comparison data. Merry 
and Rocheleau's findings regarding the long-term impact
of mediation hearings at the Cambridge Children's
Hearing Project are particularly intriguing.[35]
The study found that more than one-half of family
members (54 percent) felt that they had changed the 
way they handle conflict following participation in 
the mediation session. When initially contacted 
by the researchers, 70 percent of family members
reported less arguing and fighting after mediation,
and nine months after the hearing, two-thirds still
reported that arguing and fighting had diminished.
Only about 20 percent of disputants could attribute
the improved conditions to a specific agreement
term. These findings suggest a striking impact of
the mediation session on the subsequent behavior 
of the disputants. One possible factor leading to
improved relations is the finding that 59 percent
of the disputants reported that they better
understood the other person's point of view
following mediation-further evidence of the
transformative powers of mediation. 

Evidence regarding the long-term impact of
mediation tends to be very favorable. Disputants
often appear to improve their understanding 
of one another, experience reduced anger, 
and improve relationships following mediation. 
It is risky to be excessively glib about
the long-term impact of dispute resolution
programs, however, given the limited amount of
research that has been conducted on the topic and
the cautionary findings reported earlier in two
divorce mediation studies. The dispute resolution
field could greatly benefit from efforts to
replicate the types of studies reported in this
section on the stability of dispute settlement 
over time. 

Conclusion About Research Assessing Quality-of-
Justice Measures 

Review of the growing body of research findings
leads to the conclusion that dispute resolution
programs are often superior to adjudication for the
types of matters handled by these programs. This is
particularly true if one measures superiority in
terms of disputant perceptions of the process and
agreements, perceived fairness, and related
perceptions. Data regarding the stability of
settlements over time favors mediation but is more
equivocal. Detailed information is not available
regarding the relative precision of mediation and
adjudication in ascertaining the facts of a case,
the relative consistency of outcomes across cases
(both of these measures may have limited relevance
to mediation), or the full implications of the
processes for collective justice. Much more
research of the sort reviewed in this chapter is
needed before we can confidently assess the
advantages and disadvantages of various dispute
resolution mechanisms. Many studies have dealt with
newly developed programs, and it is particularly
important to assess the processes and outcomes of
mature, institutionalized dispute resolution
programs. Such programs may demonstrate
outcomes that are even more favorable than those
presented here due to their greater experience, but
it is also possible that bureaucratization, large 
caseloads, and related factors may lead to a 
reduction in the quality of case processing 
over time. 

The favorable views disputants hold of mediation
are not particularly surprising. Judy Filner of the
National Institute for Dispute Resolution (NIDR),
formerly Director of Training for the San Diego
Mediation Project, stated in 1992: "All too often,
disputes arise because of misunderstanding,
miscommunications, unintended slights, culturally-
based ways of acting. The courts are not designed
to identify or deal with the `essence of these
disputes. Rather, they determine facts and apply
the rules of law to them."[36] 

Assessing Program Impacts on Case Processing:
Efficiency and Costs 

Many community mediation programs have been
developed, in part, to provide relief to what is 
perceived as an overburdened court system. 
Numerous justice system-based programs and some 
composite programs have argued that community dispute
resolution efforts have the potential to remove
those cases from the court docket that are
inappropriate and assign them to a more appropriate
forum for processing. In contrast, community-based
programs generally do not assert that they will
have a marked impact on justice system efficiency. 

Three separate justice system-related goals 
have often been asserted by program planners: 
(1)increased speed of case processing when 
compared with the court handling of cases; 
(2) reduced justice system caseloads due to
the referral of substantial numbers of cases to
alternative forums; and (3) associated reduced 
costs arising from the reduced caseloads.
Substantial difficulties have been encountered in
reducing either court caseloads or costs, and many
recent program developers have downplayed or
totally dropped these goals. 

This section addresses the following questions:

o What have been the accomplishments of community
mediation programs with regard to case processing
time?

o What has been the impact of programs on court
caseloads?

o How have programs affected justice system costs? 

Case Processing Time 

A number of studies indicate that community
mediation programs do process cases rapidly. 
For example, the Florida Supreme Court-
sponsored evaluation of five projects indicated 
that for a sample of 1,320 cases that proceeded 
to a hearing, the average time required
from case referral to disposition was 11 days, with
a median of 8 days. Hearings were held in 56
percent of all cases.[37] Similarly, data from the 
study of the three neighborhood justice centers 
funded by the Justice Department found that 
the average time for case processing 
from referral to a hearing at these centers 
was 10 days; disposition of cases resolved
without a hearing required 11 days, and cases that
failed to achieve a resolution required 14 days.
Court case processing of similar cases typically
required far more time to reach disposition. For
example, the study reported an average time from
filing to trial of 98 days in Atlanta and 63 days
in Kansas City for cases similar to justice center
cases.[38] 

Similar findings are reported in many other 
studies and project annual reports. For
example, the Michigan Community Dispute Resolution
Program's Annual Report for 1994 indicates that, on
the average, cases took 17 days from initial case
referral to resolution by mediation or conciliation
for the 25 programs studied.[39] In New York State,
the Annual Report for the Community Dispute
Resolution Centers Program for FY1995 indicates
that the average time required from case intake to
disposition for single-hearing cases was 13 days,
and the average time for multiple-hearing 
cases was 44 days (12,804 cases involved single 
hearings, and 595 involved multiple hearings).[40] 

Significant differences between the court and
community dispute resolution program case
processing time are, of course, not surprising,
given the fact that the court system is burdened
with the vast bulk of the caseload while mediation
centers handle only a small, select portion of the
total caseload. But the case processing
achievements of the community mediation programs
still are noteworthy and indicate a relatively high
level of internal efficiency in scheduling and case
disposition, even with the built-in advantages
available to the centers. 

Court Caseload Impact 

A central difficulty in estimating the impact, 
if any, of dispute mediation centers on court
caseloads is the problem of determining what
proportion of dispute resolution program cases
would have proceeded into the courts and how far
they would have gone in the process. It is very
difficult to determine the amount of court
attention that mediation cases would receive
without the use of an experimental research design.

The University of North Carolina Institute of
Government's 1992 evaluation of North Carolina
community mediation programs sought to determine 
"utilization rates" for mediation-that is, the 
proportion of court cases that are appropriate for 
mediation and are actually handled by the court. 
The researchers studied case processing in three 
North Carolina mediation centers, court case processing 
in the mediation programs' counties, and court case 
processing in three counties that lacked mediation 
programs.[41] A sample of 1,421 clusters of cases filed 
in 1990 that met eligibility criteria for mediation were 
examined. (The term "clusters" refers to the fact 
that cases were examined together if a single offense
generated a number of separate court cases.) 

The researchers found that only 22.8 percent of
cases that were technically eligible for mediation
were actually sent to mediation. This is a
relatively low utilization rate, and the
researchers indicated that programs need to engage
in more vigorous outreach with the courts and
disputants in order to receive a higher proportion
of cases that are appropriate for mediation. The
mediation program that had the highest utilization
rate (handling 34.2 percent of eligible cases) also
appears to have significantly reduced the number of
court trials in its jurisdiction based on a
comparison with the matched county lacking a
mediation program. The researchers concluded that
relatively high utilization rates are essential for
mediation programs to have a substantial effect on
the court's workload. Nearly 59 percent of the
cases referred to mediation resulted in mediation
hearings (complainants failed to participate in the
bulk of the cases that did not reach hearings), and
92 percent of the hearings resulted in written
agreements. Additional research of this sort is
needed that looks carefully at the outcomes of
cases that are technically eligible for mediation.
Spontaneous changes in overall court caseloads due
to a variety of economic and social factors make
estimates of the impact of dispute resolution
programs on court caseloads particularly hazardous.
For example, the Columbus (Ohio) City Prosecutor's
Office reported that in the two years following
implementation of the Night Prosecutor Program, the
City Prosecutor's Office experienced a 6,000 case 
decrease in misdemeanor case filings. This 
decrease was attributed by the City Attorney 
to the operation of the mediation program, 
but the project's impact cannot be determined 
with any precision. 

Data on the size of dispute resolution program
caseloads cast considerable doubt on assertions
that programs currently have a major impact on
court caseloads. It appears that mediation centers
in virtually all cities handle only a relatively
small fraction of the court cases that would be
potentially amenable to mediation. For example, the
Florida evaluation indicated that the mediation
centers handle only 2 to 3 percent of the combined
civil and criminal caseloads in their
jurisdictions. A total of 136 dispute mediation
centers provided information about numbers of case
referrals for the American Bar Association's
directory. Of these, only 4 percent indicated that
they received more than 5,000 referrals annually,
and 60 percent of the programs received fewer than
500 referrals per year. 

While the total mediation caseloads are often
small, the figures still may be impressive given
the resistance to participate in mediation in many
jurisdictions, difficulties in developing adequate
referral linkages with local agencies, and similar
problems. When programs are studied individually, 
receiving 300 or 500 referrals may prove to be a 
striking achievement in a difficult environment.
Nevertheless, these caseloads are relatively low
when compared with those of the courts, even when
hypothetically correcting to consider only those
court cases likely to benefit from mediation. This
suggests in itself that the mediation programs as
they currently operate are not having a
considerable impact on court caseloads. While a few
programs that have very large caseloads may have
some impact on local court caseloads, the precise
level of this impact is very difficult to measure. 

Justice System Cost Impact and Program Costs 

A number of researchers have sought to estimate the
costs of processing mediation cases, and some
studies have sought to compare mediation costs to
court costs. The State of New York's Community
Dispute Resolution Centers Program estimates that
the cost to the State per case conciliated,
mediated, or arbitrated by programs in the State
was $126. Since cases involve a number of persons,
the program also estimated the cost per person
served; this figure was $49 in 1995. The program
did not compare dispute resolution program costs
per case to court costs per case. 

Professor Blair Sheppard of Duke University
conducted an evaluation of the Durham Dispute 
Settlement Center and sought to compare court 
costs per case with dispute resolution program 
costs per case. He reported that the average cost 
to the city, county, and State to process 
cases of the type handled by the Dispute Settlement 
Center to disposition was $186. In comparison, 
cases handled by the Dispute Settlement Center cost 
$72 per case, and this cost would decrease further 
with an increase in case referrals due to economies 
of scale. Given the program's caseload at the time of 
the evaluation, Sheppard estimated that it "represents 
a potential savings of $71,726 to the Durham justice
system."[45] This estimate is based on the
assumption that the cases handled by the program
would have proceeded through the court to
disposition. Obtaining an actual, versus
potential, savings in court costs requires that the
courts reduce expenses in the face of reduced
caseloads. Such an outcome is not automatic, and
this issue is discussed further here. 

A number of programs calculate potential cost
savings based on the untested and unlikely
assumption that all of the project cases would have
been processed by the court. Attempts to estimate
cost impacts suffer from the same problems as the
attempts to estimate court caseload reductions.
Researchers simply do not have reliable information
on how far mediation cases would otherwise
penetrate into the justice system. 

Even if the amount of court processing that would
be taken over by mediation cases were known,
relevant court costs per case are clearly very
difficult to calculate. Court costs involve such
factors as personnel costs for the judge, clerk,
stenographer, bailiff, clerical assistants, and
other staff, plus costs of retaining lawyers,
losses due to missed time from work, and
nonmonetary costs such as loss of goodwill with the
other disputing party. Fixed case costs such as
personnel and facilities could perhaps be
calculated in terms of the time required to process
the case, but collecting accurate data on the time
consumed by the various phases of processing a
single case is extremely difficult. In addition,
savings resulting from reduced caseloads are
difficult to estimate. Many court staff members and
facilities are needed, even following substantial
reductions in court caseloads, and inertia in the
system would also mitigate against any rapid
reductions in court system costs in response to
reduced court caseloads. 

The fact that many mediation programs have
relatively low caseloads when compared with 
the courts exacerbates the problem of inertia 
in court cost reduction. Presumably, most dispute 
resolution programs would need to have considerably 
larger caseloads, representing a substantial proportion 
of the court budget, before any substantial changes
would be realized in the existing court expenditures. 
Policymakers have often noted that court personnel will 
be very hesitant to refer a sufficient number of cases 
to result in court savings, since those savings would 
be purchased at the cost of their own jobs--a potential 
catch-22 situation. 

Conclusion 

In short, some community mediation programs appear
to have been successful in processing cases more
rapidly than the courts. This outcome is not
surprising, given that community mediation
programs have much smaller caseloads and fewer
logistical problems. Most dispute resolution programs 
do not seem to have significantly lowered court 
caseloads or court costs based on presently available
evidence. In recent years, these goals have been
asserted less frequently, and the goals of faster
and higher-quality dispute resolution have been
stressed more heavily. Pearson has noted that court
caseload and cost reductions are unlikely as long
as dispute mediation services are voluntary, due to
court personnel's hesitancy to make referrals and
citizens' reluctance to avail themselves of a
nontraditional service. To remedy these problems,
she suggested that mediation services be made
mandatory and a precondition for litigation.[46]
This has already happened for certain types of
disputes (such as divorce proceedings) in some 
States. Under such conditions, both court 
caseloads and costs would presumably be
affected by the presence of mediation programs.
Making mediation mandatory raises a wide variety of
other policy issues, however. Some claim that
"mandatory" mediation is a contradiction in terms
and violates a central premise of mediation: that
parties voluntarily seek to fashion a settlement to
their conflict. Others argue, however, that while
intake may be mandatory in mandatory mediation,
decisions within the actual mediation sessions can
still be voluntary. Pearson's proposal is thought-
provoking and deserves attention. 

Endnotes 

1. Portions of this chapter are drawn from chapters
5 and 6 of McGillis, D., Community Dispute
Resolution Programs and Public Policy. Washington,
DC: National Institute of Justice, 1986. 

2. Thibaut, J., and R. Walker, Procedural Justice,
New York: Wiley, 1975. 

3. Thomas Tyler's research on disputant perceptions
indicates that a process is considered to be "fair"
if disputants feel: (l) that they were listened to;
(2) that they were respected; (3) that they
understood the process; and (4) that they received
equal treatment.

4. Lon Fuller has explored the basic elements of
justice in detail in a number of articles. For
example, see: Fuller, L., "Mediation-Its Forms and
Functions," 44 Southern California Law Review 305
(1971); and Fuller, L., "The Forms and Limits of
Adjudication," 92 Harvard Law Review 353 (1979). 

5. Bush, R. and J. Folger, The Promise of
Mediation, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 
Publishers, 1994. 

6. Thibaut and Walker, Procedural Justice. 

7. Cook, R., J. Roehl, and D. Sheppard,
Neighborhood Justice Centers Field Test: Final
Evaluation Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1980, for Atlanta, Kansas City,
and Venice/Mar Vista (Los Angeles); Bridenback, M.,
The Citizen Dispute Settlement Process in Florida:
A Study of Five Programs, Tallahassee: Florida Supreme 
Court, Office of the State Courts Administrator, 1979, 
for Broward, Dade, Duval, Orange, and Pinellas Counties; 
Felstiner, W., and L. Williams, "Mediation as an 
Alternative to Criminal Prosecution," 2 Law and Human 
Behavior 223 (1978), for Dorchester (Massachusetts); 
Davis, R., M. Tichane, and D. Grayson, Mediation and 
Arbitration as Alternatives to Criminal Prosecution 
in Felony Arrest Cases: An Evaluation of the Brooklyn 
Dispute Resolution Center (First Year), New York: Vera
Institute of Justice, 1980, for Brooklyn. 

8. Cook, Roehl, and Sheppard, Neighborhood Justice
Centers Field Test, reports the following findings:
Dispute Resolution Rates for Programs in  Atlanta,
Kansas City, and Los Angeles

9. Buckle, S., and L. Buckle, Bargaining for
Justice, New York: Praeger, 1977. 

10. For example, a Florida Supreme Court-sponsored
study of five dispute settlement centers; a
National Institute of Justice study of Neighborhood
Justice Center programs in Atlanta, Kansas City,
and Los Angeles; a Vera Institute of Justice study
of mediation in Brooklyn, New York; a study of the
Dorchester (Massachusetts) mediation program by
researchers at the University of Southern
California; and a study of a Minneapolis mediation
center by a local evaluation organization. 

11. McEwen, C., and R. Maiman, "Mediation in the
Maine District Courts: An Empirical Assessment,"
Maine Law Journal (1981). 

12. Pearson, J., "Evaluation of Alternatives to
Court Adjudication," Justice System Journal (1982). 

13. Merry, S., and A. Rocheleau, Mediation in
Families: A Study of the Children's Hearing
Project, Cambridge, MA: Children Hearing 
Project, 1985. 

14. Schwartzkoff, R., and T. Morgan, Final Report
of the Evaluation of Three Experimental Community 
Justice Centres, Sydney: Law Foundation of 
New South Wales, 1982. 

15. Davis, Tichane, and Grayson, Mediation and
Arbitration as Alternatives to Criminal Prosecution
in Felony Arrest Cases. Pearson, "Evaluation of
Alternatives to Court Adjudication." 

16. McEwen and Maiman, "Mediation in the Maine
District Courts." 

17. Cook, Roehl, and Sheppard, Neighborhood Justice
Centers Field Test. The study of the Atlanta,
Kansas City, and Los Angeles programs provides
limited information comparing mediation with court
case processing in Atlanta and Kansas City, but the
questions used in surveying the two samples
differed, making comparisons difficult. Other
studies have measured perceptions of program
clients but have not collected data from a
comparison sample of court cases (for example,
Felstiner and Williams, "Mediation as an
Alternative to Criminal Prosecution," 1978; Merry
and Rocheleau, Mediation in Families: A Study of
the Children's Hearing Project, 1985; and
Schwartzkoff and Morgan, Final Report of the
Evaluation of Three Experimental Community Justice
Centres, 1982). 

18. Clarke, S., E. Valente, and R. Mace, Mediation
of Interpersonal Disputes: An Evaluation of North
Carolina's Programs, Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina, 1992. 

19. Cook, Roehl, and Sheppard, Neighborhood Justice
Centers Field Test. 

20. Merry, S., and A. Rocheleau, Mediation in
Families: A Study of the Children's Hearing
Project, Cambridge, MA: Children's Hearing Project,
1985. 

21. Davis, Tichane, and Grayson's 1980 study of the
Brooklyn mediation program and Pearson's 1982 study
of divorce mediation in Denver. 

22. Pearson, "Evaluation of Alternatives to Court
Adjudication." 

23. Keilitz, S., H. Daley, and R. Hanson, Multi-
State Assessment of Divorce Mediation and
Traditional Court Processing,
(September 1992) 

24. McEwen and Maiman, "Mediation in the Maine
District Courts." 

25. For example, Felstiner and William's (1978)
study of the Dorchester mediation center indicates
that 78 percent of disputants whose cases were
mediated stated that they were glad that they had
tried mediation, and 70 percent stated that they
felt they had had an opportunity to air their
complaints. 

26. Merry and Rocheleau, Mediation in Families. 

27. Davis, Tichane, and Grayson, Mediation and
Arbitration as Alternatives to Criminal Prosecution
in Felony Arrest Cases. 

28. Schwartzkoff and Morgan, Final Report of the
Evaluation of Three Experimental Community Justice
Centres. 

29. McEwen and Maiman, "Mediation in the Maine
District Courts." 

30. Davis, Tichane, and Grayson, Mediation and
Arbitration as Alternatives to Criminal Prosecution
in Felony Arrest Cases. 

31. Bridenback, The Citizen Dispute Settlement
Process in Florida. 

32. Davis, Tichane, and Grayson, Meditation and
Arbitration as Alternatives to Criminal Prosecution
in Felony Arrest Cases; and Felstiner and
Williams,"Mediation as an Alternative to Criminal
Prosecution." 

33. Kelley, J., "Divorce Mediation in California,"
report prepared for the Fund for Research on
Dispute Resolution, 1994. 

34. Walker, J., "Divorce Mediation Compared to
Adjudication in England and Wales," report prepared
for the Fund for Research on Dispute Resolution,
1994. 

35. Merry and Rocheleau, Mediation in Families. 

36. Filner, B., "Community Mediation in the Courts
of Justice," NIDR Forum (Winter 1992). 

37. Bridenback, The Citizen Dispute Settlement
Process in Florida. 

38. Cook, Roehl, and Sheppard, Neighborhood Justice
Centers Field Test. 

39. Michigan Community Dispute Resolution Program,
Annual Report, 1994. 

40. New York Community Dispute Resolution Centers
Program, Annual Report for April 1, 1994 to 
March 31, 1995. 

41. Clarke, Valente, and Mace, Mediation of
Interpersonal Disputes: An Evaluation of North 
Carolina's Programs. 

42. Felstiner and Williams, "Mediation as an
Alternative to Criminal Prosecution." 

43. Cook, Roehl, and Sheppard, Neighborhood Justice
Centers Field Test. 

44. McGillis, D., and J. Mullen, Neighborhood
Justice Centers: An Analysis of Potential Models,
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1977. 

45. Sheppard, B., Report to the Durham Dispute
Settlement Center on the Comparative Costs of Going
to Court vs. Mediation, Durham, NC: Duke 
University, 1985. 

46. Pearson, "Evaluation of Alternatives to Court
Adjudication." 

------------------------------

Chapter 5 

Major Issues Confronting the Community Mediation
Field 

-------------------------------

Disputes Involving Domestic Violence 

Concerns regarding the appropriateness of mediation
are particularly acute in cases involving a history 
of, or potential for, domestic violence. Many 
observers strongly oppose the use of mediation for 
domestic disputes involving a history of domestic 
violence or abuse or in which one party has considerably
less power than the other (for example, due to
psychological or economic dependencies).[27] 
The recognition that mediation could serve 
simply to perpetuate patterns of violence and abuse 
has led many programs to develop screening procedures 
to ensure that such cases are not mediated. For example, 
the Mecklenburg County (North Carolina) mediation 
program screens out domestic violence cases from 
incoming domestic and custody/visitation cases by 
having the mediator meet individually with each party
immediately prior to the conduct of a mediation
hearing. Mediators explore any issues that are
troubling the parties and seek to determine if the
couple has a history of domestic violence. Cases
are not mediated if they evidence a history of
domestic violence, and cases are also excluded if
drug or alcohol abuse is a factor in the couple's
relationship, if child abuse is alleged by one
party, or if one of the parties has a severe
psychological impairment. 

------------------------------

Key Points

o Community mediation programs have accomplished a
great deal but also confront a variety of important
challenges as the field moves into its third
decade.

o Ensuring quality control in dispute resolution
services is a central concern of all community
mediation programs. A lively debate has arisen over
what qualifications should be required for
mediators. The Society of Professionals in Dispute
Resolution (SPIDR) has been very active in
addressing this issue. A SPIDR commission has
stressed that the greater degree of choice the
parties have over the dispute resolution process,
the less mandatory the qualification requirement 
should be, and qualification criteria should be based 
on performance rather than on paper credentials. This
chapter reviews the debate regarding qualifications
in detail

o Professional organizations in the dispute
resolution field have also focused extensively on
ethical standards for mediator conduct. The
American Bar Association, the American Arbitration
Association, and the Society of Professionals in
Dispute Resolution have jointly approved "Model 
Standards of Conduct for Mediators," and 
they are discussed in this chapter.

o Community mediation programs have found it a
challenge to obtain and maintain adequate funding
support for their operations. A variety of
approaches to obtaining necessary funding support
are reviewed in this chapter.

o Community mediation programs can make critical
contributions to policing and can gain much from
improved working relationships with the police. 
Promising forms of collaboration include: 
(1) obtaining referrals from the police and then 
directly resolving the individual and intergroup 
conflicts that are referred; (2) assisting in 
police/community problem-solving efforts; 
and (3) delivering conflict management skills 
training to police personnel.

o Not all cases are appropriate for mediation, and
community mediation programs need to be sensitive
to the potential for the misuse of mediation.
Guidelines regarding which types of cases should be
routinely rejected and referred to court are
valuable (such cases typically include ones
involving violence, alcohol or other drug abuse,
and serious mental impairment of one of the
parties). Programs also need to be aware of cross-
cultural and gender issues in mediation. Such
issues are reviewed in this chapter. 

------------------------------

SPIDR Commission Recommendations Regarding
Standards of Competence and Qualifications 

The commission's seven basic recommendations 
for dispute resolution programs are
broad-ranging and carefully drafted.[7] 
They state:

(1) The formulation of standards of competence and
qualifications should be undertaken through a
process of consultation with all stakeholders and
should provide for ongoing review and revision. 

(2) Programs should clearly state their
qualifications and ethical standards and their
goals and values in a manner that can be understood
by practitioners, parties, and the public. 

(3) In a pluralistic society, the development of
qualifications standards must reflect an
understanding of the context, the diversity of
stakeholders, and respect for the variety of values
and goals of all parties. 

(4) The context of the dispute resolution service
must be examined and understood because it
determines what should be considered competent
practice in that context. 

(5) The multiple paths to becoming a competent
practitioner ought to be recognized, maintained,
and expanded. Some combination of natural aptitude,
skills, knowledge, and attributes acquired through
an appropriate combination of dispute resolution
training, education, and experience is the best
route to ensuring practitioner competence. 

(6) No one method of assessment should be relied on
because it may lead to emphasis on one measure of
competence at the expense of other valuable measures. 
Use of a combination of measures of competence 
also will reduce the likelihood of inadvertent 
discrimination. 

(7) Assessing competence is key to ensuring quality
service delivery and is a shared responsibility of
practitioners, programs, dispute resolution
associations, and parties. 

------------------------------

Hopes and Fears of Dispute Practitioners Regarding
the Development of Standards for Qualifications 

The process of developing standards for
qualifications has been a controversial one, and
many dispute resolution practitioners are
considerably ambivalent about the process because
of the complex pattern of risks and benefits
associated with it. Albie Davis, the director of
the Massachusetts District Court Mediation Program,
captured the complex countervailing attitudes in a
presentation on the topic of standards for
qualifications. She summarized the hopes and fears
of dispute resolution practitioners as follows: 

HOPES 

(1) The public will know what they are getting.
 
(2) Incompetent people won't be allowed to practice.

(3) We will finally agree on what constitutes good
practice.

(4) We'll get to set the standards instead of
having someone do it for us.

(5) We'll be taken more seriously as a profession.

(6) It's long overdue.

(7) It will bring order out of chaos.

FEARS

(1) The public will lose access to services. 

(2) Incompetent people will hide behind the standards. 

(3) We'll never be able to agree on what constitutes 
good practice. 

(4) The people who make the standards won't really 
understand mediation. 

(5) Innovation will be stifled and we'll become
exclusionary. 

(6) It's too soon. 

(7) It will kill the spirit and foster bureaucracy. 

The community mediation field will be likely to
wrestle with these conflicting factors for years to
come. More than a decade ago, Ronald Pipkin and
Janet Rifkin forewarned observers of some of the
likely problems in this area.[10] Albie Davis has
adapted their material to develop a list of "the
rise of a profession in five easy stages," with the
stages being characterized by the following
concepts: 

Stage 1: "People do the thing that needs doing." 

Stage 2: "Let's join together and train people to
do this better." 

Stage 3: "Hey! What are we doing? And who should be
doing what?" 

Stage 4: "Let's make this government-sanctioned." 

Stage 5: "Sorry! No room at the inn!" 

------------------------------

Exhibit 8 Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators

I. Self-Determination: A mediator shall recognize
that mediation is based on the principle of self-
determination by the parties. 

II. Impartiality: A mediator shall conduct the
mediation in an impartial manner. 

III. Conflicts of Interest: A mediator shall
disclose all actual and potential conflicts of
interest reasonably known to the mediator. After
disclosure, the mediator shall decline to mediate
unless all parties choose to retain the mediator.
The need to protect against conflicts of interest
also governs conduct that occurs during and after
the mediation. 

IV. Competence: A mediator shall mediate only when
the mediator has the necessary qualifications to
satisfy the reasonable expectations of the parties. 

V. Confidentiality: A mediator shall maintain the
reasonable expectations of the parties with regard
to confidentiality. 

VI. Quality of the Process: A mediator shall 
conduct the mediation fairly, diligently, and 
in a manner consistent with the principle of 
self-determination of the parties. 

VII. Advertising and Solicitation: A mediator shall
be truthful in advertising and solicitation for
mediation. 

VIII. Fees: A mediator shall fully disclose and
explain the basis of compensation, fees, and
charges to the parties. 

IX. Obligations to the Mediation Process: Mediators
have a duty to improve the practice of mediation. 

Note: These model standards were approved by the
American Arbitration Association, the Litigation 
Section and the Dispute Resolution Section of 
the American Bar Association, and the Society of 
Professionals in Dispute Resolution in 1995.

------------------------------

An Example of an Innovative Strategy for 
Fund-Raising 

A number of California programs have become quite
innovative in raising funds. The Peninsula Conflict
Resolution Center, which serves San Mateo County,
California, derives the largest single portion of
its revenues from contracts with 13 of the 20
cities in the county and offers three levels of
services for contracts. Cities seeking "full
membership" in the program pay 40 cents per
resident per year. Such members are provided with
the following services: (1) information and
referral services, (2) one-party assistance to
clarify the issues of a conflict and options, (3)
conciliation, (4) mediation, (5) administration of
a community mediation program, (6) promotion of use
of conflict resolution services, (7) recruitment
and training of community volunteers, (8) ongoing
skill development of volunteers, (9) training of local
community members, and (10) discounted conflict 
resolution services. Cities interested in "associate
membership" pay 30 cents per resident per year and
receive a smaller array of services (for example,
they receive 20 hours of mediation services free of
charge, rather than an unlimited amount, with fees
charged beyond 20 hours). "Affiliate membership" 
costs 20 cents per resident per year and 
involves a further reduced array of services. 
Cities that develop a contract with the
program pay only half the regular fee for their
first year of services as a "loss leader" incentive
offered by the program. Residents in cities that do
not have contracts with the program are charged $25
per mediation session. 

The Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center also
receives funding from the Dispute Resolution 
Trust Fund administered by San Mateo County 
under the authorization of the Dispute
Resolution Programs Act. The program raises
additional funds by charging fees for a number of
types of services, including school-based conflict
resolution training programs, special training
services, facilitation and complex dispute management
services, and the like.

In addition, the Peninsula Conflict Resolution
Center has developed arrangements with a number 
of real estate boards and associations 
in San Mateo County to mediate homebuyer/
homeseller disputes. The board refers cases 
to the program if both parties agree to try
mediation; the program is paid $100 per case by the
board of realtors. The Peninsula program has also
received funding from foundations, corporations,
and the United Way. The program budget for the year
ending June 30, 1995, was $348,721.

------------------------------

Community mediation programs have accomplished much
during the past quarter-century. Programs have
proliferated across the nation, recruited and
trained a diverse and talented array of citizens as
volunteer mediators, and sought to respond to many
of their communities' most troubling disputes. 

They have diversified their areas of application
and now provide services to courts, schools,
businesses, and other institutions. They have also
become increasingly involved in the resolution of
large-scale, multiparty public policy disputes. 

Community mediation programs have confounded the
expectations of many observers. As Madeleine Crohn,
the former president of the National Institute for
Dispute Resolution, noted, "In the 1970's, the
resolution of disputes at the community level was
labeled a fad." The growth and institutionalization
of programs over the past two decades suggests that
this characterization of the field was mistaken. 

Despite the many achievements noted in this report,
community mediation programs face critical
challenges in the coming years. Lively debates are
occurring nationwide regarding who should be
authorized to mediate conflicts and what sort of
credentials and standards are appropriate for
practitioners. Sharon Press, the director of the
Dispute Resolution Center of Florida, and Judy
Filner of NIDR noted that "we are now beyond the
initial inquiries of program set-up and into what
we call 'the second generation' of issues--namely
mediator competence and ethics."[1] The outcomes of
the debates regarding mediator qualifications and
standards are of critical importance to community
mediation programs. 

Funding difficulties are also a chronic problem 
for many programs. Numerous nonprofit agencies 
that sponsor community mediation services are
struggling. In an era of tight governmental budgets
and downsizing, community mediation programs will
need to exercise considerable ingenuity and have an
entrepreneurial approach to raising funds. Acting
on such advice is not easy for the many programs
that are currently severely underfunded and swamped
with work. Turf battles among programs arising from
competition for relatively scarce funding resources
are a related growing problem that can divert
program energies and ultimately harm the field. The
risks of excessive bureaucratization also needs
attention as the field moves into its third decade.
These important issues for the growth and
consolidation of the community mediation field are
examined in this chapter. 

Ensuring Quality Control in Dispute Resolution
Services
 
Any program that provides conflict resolution
services to disputants needs to be deeply concerned 
about the quality of the services delivered. 
Third-party neutrals with inadequate skills or 
improper ethical standards can make a mediation 
hearing a waste of time for disputants or can 
even contribute to the escalation of a conflict. 
From the inception of the community mediation field, 
program administrators have been concerned with the 
skills of their community mediators and have provided 
varying levels of training and supervision to seek to
ensure a high quality of service. 

As the dispute resolution field has matured, as
programs have expanded, and as competition for the
opportunity to handle certain classes of cases has
increased, many dispute resolution programs and
related organizations have turned their attention
to what sorts of qualifications and standards of
conduct are necessary for third-party neutrals.
Legislatures, professional associations, and others
have sponsored a variety of commissions to develop
suitable standards for the field. 

A number of approaches are available to influence
the quality of dispute resolution services.[2] The
least intrusive approaches include: (1) relying on
the free market to weed out inadequate service
providers (a solution that may work when clients
shop for mediation services-as in the case of
labor-management arbitration-but is far less effective 
if people are strongly encouraged or compelled to 
use a specific service), (2) encouraging public 
education of the consumer on how to choose mediation 
services (the Alaska Judicial Council has, in 
fact, developed a consumer guide, which is 
discussed below), (3) creating simple disclosure 
requirements for community mediators to highlight 
their experience and track records, and (4) 
establishing controls following hearings, such as 
options for malpractice suits. More intrusive 
approaches to influence the quality of dispute 
resolution services include: (1) intensive training 
requirements for community mediators, (2) codes of 
professional ethics, (3) mandatory qualifications 
for community mediators, and (4) mandatory standards 
for programs. 

Some of the most lively debates in the field
involve controversies about how to establish
qualifications for dispute resolution practitioners
and what standards of conduct are appropriate.
These issues are examined in the next section. 

The Debate Regarding Qualifications 

A variety of factors have driven the effort to
develop qualification requirements. Some observers 
argue that ensuring appropriate qualifications is
essential to protect the public. In contrast to
some other traditional dispute resolution forums
(such as labor-management mediation and arbitration) in
which the parties choose the third-party neutral,
disputants at community mediation programs
typically do not have such an option. 

In 1989 George Nicolau, the former president of the
Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution,
which established one of the nation's first
community mediation programs, noted at an ABA
conference the critical importance of quality
control of dispute resolution services. He stated
that the quality of service delivery in community
mediation programs surely depends on the integrity,
judgment, and competence of those running them. If
the selection process is flawed, if the training is
inadequate, if the program heads are more concerned
with numbers than quality, the parties can do
little or nothing about it. They remain at the
mercy of persons masquerading as mediators.[3] 

Furthermore, some governmental officials have
expressed a concern that as programs become 
institutionalized with public funding, close 
attention must be paid to the uniform application 
of standards for mediators in order to ensure 
accountability and the most effective 
and efficient expenditure of these
funds. This concern has led legislatures, courts,
and government agencies to specify qualifications
for third-party neutrals in certain programs (such
as by limiting the handling of certain types of
dispute to lawyers). Some observers have noted that
legislators and other government officials tend to
focus quickly on readily measured "inputs" (for
instance, academic credentials) as a basis for
credentializing mediators. "Outputs"-the actual
ability to deliver high-quality conflict resolution
services- are more difficult to measure but are
likely far more important. For example, the Florida
Supreme Court developed rules requiring that all
mediators handling cases involving more than $5,000
must be former trial court judges or members of the
Florida Bar with five years of experience. 

In reaction to steps being taken by legislatures,
courts, and governmental agencies to specify
qualifications for mediators, professional
organizations in the dispute resolution field (such
as SPIDR, AAA, and others) have moved vigorously to
seek to develop a consensus among practitioners in the
field and avoid the imposition of governmental
requirements that might be inappropriate, inflexible, 
and developed without input from knowledgeable 
practitioners. 

In 1989 the SPIDR Commission on Qualifications
(which had received funding support from NIDR) released 
its first report on qualifications.[4] The commission
adopted three central principles:

(1) that no single entity (rather, a variety of
organizations) should establish qualifications for
neutrals; 

(2) that the greater the degree of choice the
parties have over the dispute resolution process,
program, or neutral, the less mandatory the
qualification requirements should be; and 

(3) that qualification criteria should be based on
performance rather than paper credentials. 

In 1995 the SPIDR Commission on Qualifications
released its second report, Ensuring Competence and
Quality in Dispute Resolution Practice. 
The report does not set out a specific 
set of standards of practice. The members
of the commission felt that the diversity of the
field and its early state of development made the
specification of explicit standards inappropriate.
Instead, the commission developed a set of
recommendations that were intended to 
provide a framework for dialogue regarding
qualifications and competency. 

Mary Kay C. LeFevour, Executive Director of SPIDR,
explained that the SPIDR report is noteworthy in
not seeking to tightly restrict who can serve as a
dispute resolution practitioner: "In a field that
is feeling competitive, where it sometimes seems as
if there are more training programs than paid
opportunities to practice, the commission's report
is rather astounding; instead of shrinking the
field, it acknowledges the fact that the members of
our community who achieved their expertise though
life experience may be just as competent and
effective at resolving conflict as their colleagues
who have earned a graduate degree in a related
field."[5] 

The SPIDR commission's report also presents a
seven-step framework for understanding and ensuring
appropriate development of qualifications and standards 
that draws on the seven recommendations listed in the
sidebar on the following page. SPIDR has received a
grant from the State Justice Institute to advance
its work further in this topic area. SPIDR will
work in collaboration with the National Center for 
State Courts and, using the SPIDR competency 
framework, will develop specific guidelines for 
courts regarding dispute resolution
practitioner selection, training, qualification,
and evaluation. The product of this study is
expected to be available at the end of 1997. 

The NIDR Test Design Project's work supplements
that of the SPIDR commission. NIDR released a
report entitled Performance-Based Assessment: 
A Methodology for Use in Selecting, Training, 
and Evaluating Mediators in 1995.[6] It 
provides useful guidance to help implement the 
SPIDR principle that mediator standards should 
be performance based rather than determined by 
paper credentials. An earlier document prepared 
by the Test Design Project entitled Interim 
Guidelines for Selecting Mediators was released 
in 1993 and was critiqued by a variety of experts 
in a special section of the October 1994
issue of the Negotiation Journal. 

In 1992 the San Diego Mediation Center implemented
a performance-based system for mediator selection and
training. Mediators earn credentials based on an
assessment of three factors: training, experience,
and performance. Performance is assessed through
the observation of the handling of a simulated
mediation session by trainees. 

The Alaska Judicial Council has published A
Consumer Guide to Selecting a Mediator to assist
citizens in selecting an appropriate mediator. The
report draws on the SPIDR Commission on
Qualifications documents, the NIDR Test Design
Project materials, and related sources.[8] 

A number of books elaborate on the complexities
involved in establishing qualifications and
standards in this field. Catherine Morris and
Andrew Pirie's 1994 collection of papers by
Canadian authors, Qualifications for Dispute
Resolution: Perspectives on the Debate, is
particularly useful.[9] 

The community mediation field is at different
stages in different States, and the NIDR 
Compendium discussed in Appendix A provides a 
useful guide to which States are stipulating
qualifications by statute and court rule. To the
extent that qualifications are based on extensive
paper credentials, community mediators are being
excluded from some types of cases. The use of
performance-based qualifications of the sort
recommended by SPIDR and others can mitigate
against this problem for talented mediators who
lack specific graduate degrees. 

To the extent that paper credentials drive mediator
qualifications, considerable social stratification
of the pools of practitioners on the basis of
gender, race, class, and education will be likely
to occur. Restricting qualifications (for example,
so that only lawyers or clinical psychologists can
handle certain classes of cases) would make it more
difficult to develop pools of mediators who reflect
the diversity of a local community. Minorities,
people of moderate to low income, young people,
and, in some cases, women, would be
underrepresented. Additional problems arise if
certain types of cases can only be handled by
retired judges. Chief Justice Samuel Zoll of the
Massachusetts District Court has noted that "former
judges are entering the ADR marketplace in
increasing numbers. I remain concerned that the
collegial relationships among them and their former
colleagues, as well as the dynamics of the bench
and bar in general, leave the door open to charges
of favoritism and `sweetheart' arrangements. I
would like to see the judges, both sitting and
retired, better protected in this area."[11] 

Ethical Standards of Conduct 

A number of organizations have developed ethical
standards for mediator conduct. In 1995 the
American Arbitration Association, the American Bar
Association, and the Society of Professionals in
Dispute Resolution released their jointly approved
"Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators." 
They provide brief statements of nine specific 
standards of conduct followed by commentary on 
each one. 

The nine standards are presented in exhibit 8.
Considerable cross-fertilization has occurred in
the development of standards of conduct because
numerous groups at the national, State, and local
levels have been preparing draft standards. 

A number of States have released standards. The
NIDR Compendium discussed in Appendix A provides
information on legislation in this area. The 
Florida Supreme Court has developed a 
grievance procedure along with its code 
of conduct to provide a means to enforce
provisions of the code. 

Robert Baruch Bush has provided an interesting
assessment of the ethical dilemmas that arise in
the field of mediation. He studied the work of 80
mediators in Florida who handled a variety of types
of cases (community disputes, family conflicts,
civil cases). In a paper prepared for NIDR in 1992,
The Dilemmas of Mediation Practice: A Study 
of Ethical Dilemmas and Policy Implications, 
Bush demonstrates how ethical dilemmas occur 
when two or more basic values held by mediators 
appear to be in conflict. He addresses
the following nine values: competence,
impartiality, confidentiality, informed consent,
self-determination, role limitation, harm
avoidance, good faith performance, and conflict of
interest.[12] For example, the value of
impartiality can come into conflict with the value
of harm avoidance if a community mediator feels
that one party is being unjustly bullied by another
more powerful party. 

The appropriate level of technical detail of
ethical standards for court-connected dispute
resolution services is currently being debated in
Massachusetts. The Standing Committee on Dispute
Resolution of the Massachusetts Trial Court
released its interim report in November 1995. The
report includes a 10-page section setting out
ethical standards. The chief justice of the
district courts is concerned that such detailed
(and technically worded) ethical standards may
serve to confuse community mediators. He stated in
a letter to the standing committee that in his
opinion, "The ethical standards should be reduced
to one page of basic principles that can be
understood by people of common sense. More explicit
requirements should await the maturity of the
field. I believe that many who mediate in the
District Court will find the present draft of
ethical standards far, far too complex." As an
alternative, the chief justice recommended the one-
page "Standards of Mediation Practice" developed by
the Massachusetts Association of Mediation 
Programs and Practitioners as a preferable 
approach. 

The Challenge of Obtaining and Maintaining Adequate
Funding Support

Community mediation programs have experienced
chronic problems in obtaining and then 
maintaining adequate funding support to 
meet the wide range of local needs for 
dispute resolution services. Programs
typically have too few staff members given their
actual (not to mention potential) workloads, and
staff members are often paid salaries that are far
too meager given the challenging nature of the
work. The low salaries in the field ensure a
relatively high turnover level of personnel, and
many of those who have stayed in the field for long
periods of time are highly committed and talented
reformers who certainly work despite, not because
of, their salaries. 

This situation is troubling, but not surprising.
Governments at all levels have been tightening
their budgets during the past two decades. Dispute
resolution programs find themselves competing with
many other social service and related organizations
for a share of shrinking public resources.
Furthermore, in those states that have earmarked
funds for community dispute resolution (for
example, with funds being raised from surcharges on
civil case filing fees), community programs are
increasingly competing with local bar associations
and the courts for use of the funds. Roger Fisher
once characterized the field as one in which the
objective needs for services were very high but
demand was relatively low, resulting in inadequate
public funding.[13] Peter Szanton echoing this
sentiment in his evaluation for NIDR of four state
offices of dispute resolution stated: 

In many realms--interpersonal, labor-management,
international--confrontational styles seem to be
slowly giving way to norms of joint problem-solving
and mutual accommodation. It is natural to see the
last decade's interest in ADR in light of this
tidal shift in values. But it is striking that,
even so, American society does not value ADR enough
to be willing to pay much for it.[14] 

A decade after Szanton conducted his evaluation,
the relatively small budgets of the various State
offices of dispute resolution and related programs
strongly support his assertion.[15] 

As was noted in chapter 3, some States provide
funding from the general State budget for community
mediation programs. For example, the State of 
New York annually appropriates more than $3 million 
for this purpose. The Community Dispute Resolution 
Center Program of the Unified Court System of New York
distributes these funds to individual nonprofit
agencies that operate programs. Programs can cover
up to 50 percent of their annual budgets through
such State grant funds (after an initial match-free
grant per county of $20,000). Programs generate the
remaining portion of their budgets from sources
which, include Federal, State, county, and local
governmental agencies, training fees and other fees
for service; foundations; the United Way, and
fundraising events. 

In contrast with New York, programs in a number of
other States are funded by a statutorily authorized
assessment on civil court filing fees. For example,
in Michigan courts collect a $2 surcharge on civil
case filing fees. Programs in each county can
receive funds from the assessments collected in
their county. In 1994 more than $l.6 million
dollars was raised for program operations in
Michigan through such assessments; 4 percent of
this total was expended on the administrative costs
of coordinating the overall program, 1 percent was
expended on training and program development, and
the remaining 95 percent was distributed in direct
support to local community dispute resolution
centers. The level of State funding of local
programs varies widely in Michigan. Seven programs
received $10,000 or less in 1994 while five
received more than $90,000, with the largest
allotment being $171,780 to the Settlement Center of 
Oakland. State funds typically account for 50 to 60 
percent of total individual program budgets, with 
the remaining funds obtained from local government 
appropriations, foundations, fees, and other sources. 

California has a similar mechanism for collecting
surcharges on civil case filing fees. Community
mediation programs in California are confronting
difficulties in funding, in part because the
competition for local California Dispute Resolution
Program Act funds has increased. Such funds are
increasingly being sought directly by the courts,
bar associations, and others at the local level.
California programs are responding by seeking to
develop new sources of funding from training fees
and new types of services. 

In jurisdictions in which funding is very limited
for community mediation, mediation program leaders
should consider linking their program with other
local social service programs or related entities
and sharing space and other overhead costs. Many
communities are developing school-based community
centers following the model of the New York City
Beacon Community Centers Program, which operates 36
centers. Such programs provide a wide variety of
services in school buildings after school, on
weekends, and during the summer. A mediation
program could become incorporated in such a center
and have excellent space in which to operate and
hold hearings. Volunteer community mediators could
provide their services in a safe setting that is
accessible to disputants. The Queens County, New
York, mediation program has adopted this approach
and operates out of its local Beacon school. 

A number of documents provide very useful guidance
on strategies for obtaining funding. For example,
the NIDR Community Dispute Resolution Manual:
Insights and Guidance from Two Decades of Practice,
published in 1991, carefully examines the subject
of funding. Topics addressed include establishing a
program budget, launching a fundraising plan,
building a diverse funding base, planning an
effective marketing campaign, and evaluating
fee-for-service options.[16] The 1995 NIDR Conflict
Resolution Institute for Courts Conference Notebook
also provides useful guidance on funding issues,
including an examination of various ways to design
fee structures for community mediators (flat rates,
hourly rates, per session rates, or nominal
stipends).[17] Christopher Honeyman has prepared 
a report for the Hewlett Foundation entitled 
Financing Dispute Resolution that also examines 
issues in this topic area.[18] 

Programs seeking Federal or foundation funding can
use a number of computerized databases to assist in
their funding efforts. The Catalog of Federal
Domestic Assistance is available on the
Internet, and the Federal Partnerships Against
Violence Network, mentioned earlier, provides
access to components of the catalog that are
relevant to conflict resolution and violence
prevention programs.[19] The Foundation Directory
is also available in hard copy at libraries and on
the Internet and can be searched to locate
foundations that have specific types of program
funding interests.[20] 

Developing Working Relationships With the Local
Police 

Community mediation programs can make critical
contributions to policing and can gain much from
improved working relationships with the police.
Three major promising forms of collaboration
between community mediation and policing include:
(1) obtaining referrals from the police and then
directly resolving the individual and intergroup
conflicts that are referred, (2) assisting in
police/community problem-solving efforts, and (3)
delivering conflict management skills training to
police personnel. 

Community mediation programs and community policing
share many aims in common, and some mediation programs
are already making key contributions to policing in
their local communities. For the most part,
however, community mediation programs have not
developed close working relationships with their
local police departments. Such relationships can
benefit the local community, the mediation program,
and the police. 

Police Referrals to Mediation Programs 

A substantial proportion of calls for service
involving disputes among neighbors, relatives, 
and acquaintances are suitable for referral to
mediation. Local police departments benefit greatly
when such disputes are resolved. According to a
1995 study by Shepherd, [21] calls for service have
been shown to diminish sharply from neighbors whose
disputes have been mediated. In many cases, a few
homes in a neighborhood generate a greatly
disproportionate share of calls for service to the
police because of festering, ongoing disputes. Such
"neighbors" disrupt life in an entire neighborhood.
Community mediation programs can often resolve such
neighborhood conflicts and can intercept and settle
minor disputes before they escalate into serious
crimes. The successful resolution of such disputes
improves the quality of life in a community and can
free police resources to deal with other critical
matters. Despite these many potential benefits,
community mediation has been greatly under used by
many police departments. 

A number of techniques have been used by programs
to encourage police referrals, including:

o Briefing police recruits at the police academy
and briefing line officers at roll calls about the
availability of mediation services. Police 
officers can be a difficult audience to persuade 
of the benefits of new services because they 
have seen many innovations come and go. 
Community mediation program directors have 
reported that the most effective presentations
to police personnel include descriptions of
specific cases that were satisfactorily resolved
and that resulted in reduced calls for service and
reduced problems for the police. In addition, it is
very helpful to have a police officer who has had
positive experiences with mediation participate in
the presentation. Officers are understandably more
readily persuaded by colleagues who share their
experiences and viewpoints. Careful attention needs
to be given to proper screening criteria for cases.
Police officers need clear information
regarding what types of cases are and are not
suitable for mediation.

o Developing referral forms and cards to expedite
case referrals. The San Francisco Community Board
Program has provided local police officers with
referral cards in a number of languages that can be
given to disputants when a case seems appropriate
for mediation. The Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Bureau of
Police has developed a neighborhood dispute
referral form that is used to refer appropriate
cases to the local neighborhood dispute
settlement program. The form provides information
to both the complainant and the respondent
regarding the referral and the procedures used by
the mediation program to handle cases. Police
officers complete the referral forms for mediation
as an alternative to providing a citation when cases
appear appropriate for mediation and complainants 
agree that mediation is desired (they also recommend 
mediation in instances in which no formal citation 
is possible but mediation seems advisable). Citations 
for relevant offenses are issued if respondents decide 
not to pursue mediation. If both parties attend a 
mediation session, mediators seek to assist them in 
arriving at a mutually agreeable settlement. Mediation
sessions are held in local churches and municipal
buildings that are convenient to disputants. 

The Harrisburg chief of police has been very
impressed with the work of the Neighborhood Dispute
Settlement Center (NDSC) and in testimony before
the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Judiciary Committee in September 1994 stated: 

Through the NDSC referral network, dealing with
interpersonal and neighborhood problems has
benefited the Harrisburg Police Bureau by fewer
calls to the same persons; fewer prosecutions at
the district justice courts; more available patrol
time for emergencies; and an increased rapport
between the police and the community for the
utilization of this new, community-oriented
solution to an old problem.

o Providing feedback on case outcomes. A number of
departments have routinely sent notes to officers
who have made referrals informing them of whether 
a mediation hearing was held and whether an 
agreement was reached. Such feedback is
likely to be valuable in encouraging officers to
make future referrals to the program. If such notes
are also sent to the officers' supervisor, they can
be helpful in providing officers with credit for
the referral. At present, officers primarily
receive credit for arrests. Community policing
efforts are seeking to broaden the range of
activities for which officers are rewarded and
should make arrangements to provide meaningful
credit and recognition to officers who make
appropriate referrals to mediation. 

Assisting in Police/Community Problem-Solving
Efforts 

Community mediation programs can be a powerful ally
to the police in seeking to identify and remedy local
problems that underpin crime and disorder-a key
mission of the many departments implementing 
community policing. Many community mediation 
programs have become deeply involved in facilitating 
community meetings to resolve local problems. The 
issues addressed have ranged from local crime problems,
such as the existence of crack houses, to
deficiencies in city services that contribute to
neighborhood deterioration, to major public policy
issues, such as the merger of school districts or
the siting of hazardous waste. 

The police can benefit from the involvement of
community mediation programs in virtually all 
major community problem-solving efforts. 
Police officers are often diligent in 
holding community meetings but are typically not 
trained to conduct such meetings and are often 
not viewed as sufficiently impartial by
all parties to a dispute to be effective. For
example, police officers in Seattle convened a
meeting between officials, students, and parents
from two high schools following a violent incident
between groups of students from the two schools.
The incident evoked strong concern that the
violence would escalate. Once the meeting began,
however, the officers simply stated that everyone
needed to talk about this and then opened the floor
to discussion. An awkward silence ensued, and the
officers found it very difficult to move the
conversation forward. The principals of the two
schools were reluctant to take a leadership role in
the discussion out of fear that they would look
like partisans for their own group of students
involved in the conflict. A number of parents
eventually seized control of the meeting and were
effective in leading the discussion and moving
toward a settlement between the opposing groups.
The officers noted after the meeting that they felt
at a loss as to how to move the discussion forward
and were relieved that parents helped. Community
mediation programs have systematic skills to
facilitate such meetings and keep them moving
toward a clear definition of issues and a
settlement. They also diligently seek to maintain a
neutral position in order to enhance their capacity
to facilitate meetings among people with widely
divergent opinions. 

Delivering Conflict Management Skills Training to
Police Personnel 

A significant portion of police work involves
confronting and managing conflicts among community
residents. Some community mediation programs have
begun to train local police personnel in conflict
management skills. Such skills can help officers
resolve conflicts where possible, can enable them
to identify disputes that are ripe for community
mediation, and can even help to protect officers
from injury since many assaults on officers occur
in the context of responding to routine domestic
and neighborhood disputes. Glensor and Stern have 
discussed the need for collaboration between the 
police and mediation programs. In a 1995 paper for 
the Police Executive Research Forum, they stated: 

The police, unlike other professionals (for
example, medical), do not have established
protocols or training to handle the various ills
they are expected to prevent (Goldstein, 1990).
Research indicates that a majority of calls for
service, such as landlord/tenant disputes, 
loud parties, rowdy teens, neighborhood 
disagreements, and traffic and parking complaints, 
do not require a law enforcement intervention. 
Yet police have traditionally relied on law
enforcement strategies such as rapid response,
random patrol and retrospective investigation to
address these problems. Such incident-driven
policing only addresses the symptoms of the
problems, not the causes. As a result, these calls
for service are often repeated and increasingly
involve violence, posing a threat to the parties
directly involved in the conflict as well as to the
responding police officers.[22] 

Community mediation programs have been designed and
implemented precisely with the goal of addressing
the causes of problems rather than only the
symptoms and have sophisticated tools to help solve 
such underlying problems. Mediation programs can help 
to train officers in essential conflict management and
referral skills. The American Bar Association has
provided extensive training to officers in a number
of police departments to enhance officers'
abilities to diagnose a conflict situation quickly
and intervene in a fashion that serves to 
de-escalate the conflict. Officers are also taught to
identify disputes that are suitable for referral to
a local mediation program and to recognize when
other types of referrals to social services are
also advisable. 

Despite the many benefits that could arise from
increased collaboration between community 
mediation programs and community policing 
initiatives, such cooperative efforts are quite 
rare across the nation. A number of factors 
contribute to this situation. Perhaps the most 
important is simply the traditional law
enforcement orientation of many police personnel.
Many officers view problem-solving/dispute
resolution tasks as outside the realm of
traditional policing and also feel uncomfortable
with the tasks because of a lack of training in
these skills. These views have made the
implementation of community policing strategies
challenging in many localities and certainly
inhibit close cooperation with community mediation. 
These traditional perceptions of the role of the police
are often reinforced by the incentive systems
within police departments that primarily reward
officers for arrests rather than for other types of
services such as community problem solving. 
Police departments and community mediation
programs that are interested in collaborating need
to consciously recognize the quite different
perspectives of traditional police officers and
mediation personnel and to work to overcome
attitudinal and institutional barriers to
communication and cooperation. 

Turf Concerns: The Ebb and Flow of Collaboration
and Competition for Markets 

Many observers feel that those community mediation
programs that thrive financially will need to
exercise considerable ingenuity. Steve Toben, a
program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation, has noted that "in the community area,
great potential lies in strategic alliances between
mediation programs and enterprises like community 
development corporations and youth-serving agencies. 
The survivors in the nonprofit world will be 
those populated by business-savvy social 
entrepreneurs--individuals who do not flinch from 
concepts such as marketing, downsizing, and 
merger."[23] This observation seems plausible. But, 
as competition has increased for scarce resources,
many programs have experienced increasing concerns
about protecting their turf. The late James Laue
noted the potential harm to the field that could
arise from excessive competition. He stated that he
once heard a dispute resolution workshop leader say
to workshop participants, "Your job is to take
market shares away from the other organizations.
" Laue stated: "I was insulted and angry. Is this 
the value that will drive this field
of cooperative problem-solving? Beating your
competition?"[24] In some jurisdictions, under
certain circumstances, the answer seems to be
"yes." 

Program directors have a responsibility to maintain
their program's fiscal health and seek to reach
program objectives. Program advisory boards often
urge programs to be assertive in maintaining and
expanding services. The line between assertive
program-growth strategies and overly aggressive
competition with other programs is difficult to
define, but many observers feel that they know it
when they see it. 

For example, in the State of New York, some
programs have marketed school-based conflict 
resolution services actively in the jurisdictions 
of other community mediation programs, which 
has caused strains with the programs upon whose 
turf they are treading. The leaders of 
the Statewide Community Dispute Resolution Centers 
Program (CDRCP) have mediated such disputes 
between programs effectively. In States
that lack an overarching authority such as the
CDRCP, it is not clear who should or can mediate
such disputes. This has resulted in some fairly
heated competitions between programs which some
observers have characterized as "peacemakers at
war." Statewide associations can play a useful role
in developing guidelines for program competition
that may avert the worst manifestations of such
conflict or can mediate between programs when acute
conflicts occur. 

In a free market, some measure of competition is,
of course, healthy and to be encouraged.
Competition can spur programs to develop high-
quality services. Beyond a certain point, however,
excessive, aggressive competition among dispute
resolution organizations can become 
debilitating to the organizations
themselves. Such sharp-edged competition can drain
program resources and strain program credibility in
marketing conflict resolution services to clients
while the program itself is involved in cutthroat
competition with related organizations. 

Concerns Regarding the Appropriateness of Certain
Types of Cases for Mediation/Arbitration 

Community mediation programs are not appropriate
forums for the resolution of all types of
interpersonal conflicts. Observers of the field
have noted from its inception that cases involving
substantial power disparities among parties are
particularly worrisome. In such cases, the courts
have ways to at least help equalize such power
disparities (through procedural safeguards, legal
representation and so on) and judges can also
impose sanctions on offenders. Private mediation 
sessions lack such protections. 

Sara Cobb and Janet Rifkin, who have studied how
mediators deal with power disparities, have
observed significant problems.[25] The researchers
analyzed transcripts of a sample of mediation
hearings that were held at five Massachusetts
community mediation programs and interviewed 
mediators regarding their understanding of the role 
of neutrality in mediation. They found that mediators
tend to use two different approaches to the concept
of neutrality. One approach defines neutrality as
"impartiality"-treating the parties the same. An
alternative approach to neutrality involves mediators 
seeking to achieve "equidistance" between parties, 
particularly with regard to levels of power. In the 
second approach, mediators seek to balance the power 
of the parties. Achieving such a balance is often much 
easier said than done. It is not clear that cases involving
substantial power disparities are suitable for
mediation. By staying neutral in the sense of being
impartial, mediators can reinforce injustices
arising from such power disparities. Beth Roy, a
psychologist and community mediator, has 
stressed that, at a minimum, research
in this area must prompt practitioners to "know
that disputants bring unequal resources into the
room by virtue of their places in society. Women,
people of color, lower-class people, and disabled
people are likely to be disadvantaged in specific
ways that affect negotiations over every issue."[26] 

Hermann and West compared the outcomes of a sample
of 603 small claims cases in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
which were either mediated or arbitrated. The study 
reinforces concerns regarding the role of power in both
mediation and court. The researchers found that in
both mediated and adjudicated cases minority
respondents paid more and minority claimants
received less than white respondents and claimants,
but that the differences in settlement amounts were
greater in mediated than in adjudicated cases. The
pattern did not occur when lawyers represented
parties in adjudicated collection cases and also
did not appear when mediation was conducted with
two minority comediators. Minority disputants were
more satisfied with mediation than adjudication
despite this pattern of findings, a fact that
demonstrates that interpreting satisfaction
measures can be complex. 

In addition to concerns about the adverse impact of
individual power disparities and patterns of
violence and abuse on the appropriateness of cases
for mediation, some observers have stressed that
dispute resolution programs can intentionally or
unintentionally serve as vehicles for dispute
suppression and pacification of less powerful
segments of society. For example, Laura Nader has
stated that the dispute resolution movement reduces
the power of groups promoting civil rights,
consumer rights, environmental rights, women's
rights, and other causes. Hearings are private,
and, in contrast to court cases, do not establish
legal precedents. Disputes are settled one by one
without the option for collective action through
class action mechanisms. The values of harmony and
consensus are championed, and the "focus on
assistance to individuals distracts attention from
economic forces, power differentials, and
inequality in distribution of remedies in the
United States."[28] 

This critique certainly has merit for certain
classes of disputes involving abuses of power. For
example, mediating cases involving code violations 
by an unethical landlord and essentially 
co-opting and pacifying the one or two 
vocal tenants in a building while leaving the
others to suffer with substandard housing
conditions is no substitute for more aggressive
action in court to compel remedies for all of the
tenants facing similar conditions. Dispute
resolution programs need to be sensitive to the
potential for the abuse of mediation, and
guidelines indicating which types of cases should
be routinely rejected and referred to court are
valuable (such cases typically include ones that
involve violence, alcohol or other drug abuse, or
serious mental impairment of one of the parties).
In this regard, most programs already have policies
to refuse to mediate cases involving domestic
violence. It is not clear how the Nader critique
applies to the many community dispute resolution 
cases involving interpersonal conflicts among 
relatives, neighbors, and acquaintances of 
roughly equal power. Such cases often dominate 
program caseloads. 

Cross-Cultural and Gender Issues in Mediation 

Mediation sessions involve communication between
parties in conflict. Marked differences between
parties in their styles of communication, their
assumptions about social relations and social
norms, and related factors can inhibit effective
communication and the eventual settlement of
conflicts. Some measure of differences based on
these dimensions can occur between members of the
same society and can inhibit communications. Even
greater differences can, of course, occur between 
members of different cultures, and these can make the
conduct of mediation hearings between individuals
from different groups quite challenging. Such
challenges for community mediation programs are
inevitably going to increase as the population of
the United States becomes increasingly diverse 
ethnically and racially. 

It is clearly important for mediation staff members
and volunteer mediators both to develop an
understanding of how cross-cultural differences can
affect communication in mediation sessions and to
develop skills to deal with and facilitate
discussions among disputants from different
cultures. This topic has received increasing
attention in recent years, and the State of New
York mediation program discussed earlier sponsored
a national conference in 1991 entitled "The Twenty-First
Century Mosaic: Resolving Disputes in a Culturally
Diverse Society" to address such issues
systematically.[29] The papers in the resulting
volume are a very useful resource. They provide
both theoretical discussions and practical tips 
(for example, to hold individual caucuses with 
parties to clarify issues of cultural difference 
that arise, so as not to embarrass either party 
in front of the other). The need for mediators to 
deal with their own prejudices and biases is also 
addressed by many of the contributors, and ways of 
heightening personal awareness of one's own biases 
are examined to keep such biases from adversely 
affecting mediator performance.
 
Gender differences in communication style can also
potentially play a major role in the process and
outcome of mediation sessions. Books dealing 
with gender differences in communication style 
have become best-sellers in recent years.[30] 
One of the major themes in this literature involves 
many females' preference to seek consensus in 
contrast to many males tendency to seek 
confrontation. Some observers have suggested 
that these different tendencies are reflected 
in the fact that the majority of mediators are 
female.[31] A variety of empirical studies 
have been conducted to examine the impact
of gender differences on mediation.[32] While
gender can affect communication style, empirical
studies dealing with the impact of gender on
mediation have typically shown that the gender of
the parties, or of the mediators, or both has not
played a significant role in mediation outcomes.
The researchers who have conducted these studies
have noted the methodological limitations of the
existing studies, however, and further research in
this area is needed to examine the role of gender
differences in the mediation of disputes.
Variations in communication style and gender biases 
by either disputants or mediators seem likely to play an
important role in at least some mediation hearings,
and mediators certainly need to be aware of this
potential and to address problems as they arise. 

Increasing International Dimensions of the
Mediation Field 

The community mediation field has looked to foreign
models for dispute resolution since its inception.
Richard Danzig's paper in 1973 in the Stanford Law
Review, "Toward the Creation of a Complementary, 
Decentralized System of Criminal Justice,"
reviewed the implications of African tribal moots
for American dispute resolution and was influential
in the thinking of many early proponents of
community mediation programs.[33] Similarly,
numerous observers pointed to the widespread use of
people's mediation committees in neighborhoods and
workplaces in the People's Republic of China and
considered their applicability, if any, to the
United States setting. A variety of observers were
quick to point out difficulties in transferring
such foreign models to the United States.[34] 

Conference panels on international and cross-
cultural issues in dispute resolution have provided
opportunities for discussions of the
transferability of dispute resolution practices
across societies. For example, sessions were held
at the 1995 National Conference on Peacemaking and
Conflict Resolution on such topics as "The North
American Model: Critiques and Adaptations," a
session that brought together speakers from diverse
settings such as Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, and
Jamaica; "Cultural Dimensions of Peacemaking and
Conflict Resolution in Southeast Asia"; "South
African Community Justice Centres"; and numerous
others. In addition, sessions were held on Native
American conflict resolution mechanisms. Such 
sessions are useful to share information 
about dispute processing mechanisms and
to sensitize dispute resolution practitioners
regarding cross-cultural issues that may arise in
their caseloads given the great diversity of the
American population. Community dispute resolution
centers in the United States often host delegations
from foreign countries interested in American
innovations, and American trainers have been very
active in providing dispute resolution training in
such diverse settings as Colombia, Guatemala, South
Africa, Northern Ireland, Jordan, Russia, and
Turkey. 

Conclusion 

This chapter reviewed major issues confronting the
community mediation field. The development and
implementation of appropriate qualifications and 
standards continues to require careful 
attention and has significant implications 
for programs development. Obtaining
adequate funding for program operations is a
constant struggle, and turf battles that accompany
scarcity of resources have the potential to harm
individual programs and the overall field.
Additional topics that were addressed in this
chapter include strategies for developing effective
working relationships with the police to obtain
referrals, the appropriateness of certain types 
of cases for mediation, and cross-cultural and 
gender issues in mediation. 

Endnotes 

1. Press, S., and J. Filner, "Getting to Excellence
in Court System ADR," NIDR News: 3 (March/April
1996). 

2. See the comments of E. Neumeier, and D. Joyce
"Qualifications: Two Voices from the Debate," in
Dispute Resolution Access: A Guide to Current
Research and Information: 3 (Fall 1995). See also
SPIDR, Qualifying Neutrals: The Basic Principles,
Washington, DC: Society of Professionals in Dispute
Resolution, 1989. 

3. See Nicolau, G., "The Qualifications Dilemma:
The Pros and Cons of Setting Mediator
Qualifications," Expanding Horizons: Theory and
Research in Dispute Resolution: Conference
Proceedings, (Syracuse, NY) Washington, DC:
American Bar Association, 1989. 

4. See SPIDR, Qualifying Neutrals: The Basic
Principles. 

5. LeFevour, M.K.C., SPIDR essay in NIDR Forum. 

6. NIDR, Performance-Based Assessment: A
Methodology for Use in Selecting, Training, and
Evaluating Mediators, Washington, DC: NIDR, 1995. 

7. Ensuring Competence and Quality in Dispute
Resolution Practice: Report No. 2 of the 
SPIDR Commission on Qualifications, Washington, 
DC: Society of Professionals in Dispute 
Resolution, 1995. 

8. A Consumer Guide to Selecting a Mediator, Alaska
Judicial Council, July 1995
[www.ajc.state.ak.us/MEDIATORFRAME.htm]. 

9. Morris, C., and A. Pirie, Qualifications for
Dispute Resolution: Perspectives on the Debate,
Victoria, British Columbia: University of Victoria
Institute for Dispute Resolution, 1994. 

10. Pipkin, R., and J. Rifkin, "The Social
Organization in ADR: Implications for
Professionalization of Mediation," Justice System
Journal, Vol. 9/2 (Summer 1984). 

11. Justice Samuel Zoll, letter of December 22,
1995. 

12. Bush, The Dilemmas of Mediation Practice: A
Study of Ethical Dilemmas and Policy Implications,
Washington, DC: NIDR, 1992. 

13. Fisher, R. personal communication, April 1980. 

14. Szanton, P., Four State Offices of Dispute
Resolution: A Report to the National Institute for
Dispute Resolution, Washington, DC: Szanton 
Associates, March 1988. 

15. Ibid. 

16. NIDR, Community Dispute Resolution Manual:
Insights and Guidance from Two Decades of Practice,
Washington, DC: NIDR, 1991. 

17. Bethel, C., and M. Ostermeyer, Conflict
Resolution Institute for Courts Conference
Notebook, Washington, DC: National
Institute of Justice, 1995. 

18. Honeyman, C., Financing Dispute Resolution,
Hewlett Foundation. 

19. The Partnerships Against Violence Network
(PAVNET) is cosponsored by the U.S. Departments 
of Justice, Health and Human Services, 
Education, Labor, and Agriculture. PAVNET and 
related useful resources can be reached
through the National Criminal Justice Reference
Service Web Site at http://www.ncjrs.org. 

20. Foundation Directory, New York: Foundation
Center, March 1997. 

21. See Shepherd, R., Neighborhood Dispute
Settlement: An Evaluation of Neighborhood 
Dispute Settlement Center's Program with the 
City of Harrisburg Bureau of Police, Unpublished 
paper, Shippensburg: Shippensburg State 
University, 1995. 

22. Glensor, R., and A. Stern, "Dispute Resolution
and Policing: A Collaborative Approach Toward
Effective Problem Solving," in Fresh Perspectives:
A Police Executive Research Forum
Publication, January 1995. Also see Goldstein, H.,
Problem-Oriented Policing, New York: McGraw-Hill,
1990; Schaffer, R., Testimony Before the Pennsylvania
House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, 
September 29, 1994; and Shepherd, Neighborhood Dispute
Settlement. 

23. Toben, S., "The Future of the Conflict
Resolution Field," NIDR News (January/February
1996). 

24. Laue, J., "The Conflict Resolution Movement:
History, Problems, and Prospects," in Expanding 
Horizons: Theory and Research in Dispute Resolution:
Conference Proceedings (Syracuse, New York) 
Washington, DC, August 1989. 

25. Cobb, S., and J. Rifkin, "Neutrality as a
Discursive Practice: The Construction and
Transformation of Narratives in Community
Mediation," report to the Fund for Research on
Dispute Resolution, 1990. 

26. Roy, B., "From Community Mayhem to Effective
Mediation: The Usefulness of Research," NIDR Forum
(Summer 1994). 

27. See Mediation in Cases of Domestic Abuse:
Helpful Option or Unacceptable Risk? The Final
Report of the Domestic Abuse and Mediation Project,
Maine Court Mediation Service, January 1992, for a
thorough discussion of the issues in this area. 

28. Nader, L., "Trading Justice for Harmony," NIDR
Forum (Winter 1992). 

29. See McGlynn, E., and T. Christian, The Twenty-
First Century Mosaic, Resolving Disputes in a
Culturally Diverse Society, Proceedings of the
Seventh New York State National Conference on
Dispute Resolution (Kiamesha Lake, New York),
Loudonville, NY: Siena College Peace Studies
Program, 1993. 

30. See Deborah Tannen's analyses of gender
differences in communications. 

31. For example, see Rogers, S., "Understanding Our
Community Mediators: Factors That Affect
Volunteers." Proceedings of the Peace Bridge
Conference-Dispute Resolution Into the 90's.
Buffalo, NY, printed by the New York State
Community Dispute Resolution Centers Program,
September 1989. 

32. For example, see Pruitt, D., P. Carnevale, B.
Forcey, and M. Van Slyke, "Gender Effects in
Negotiation: Constituent Surveillance and 
Contentious Behavior," Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology 22 (1986): 264-275;
Carnevale, P., "Research on Mediator Behavior," New
York Mediator 6 (1988); Hall, K., and M. Tucker,
"Disputant Characteristics and Favorability of
Mediated Settlements," Journal of Psychology and
the Behavioral Sciences 4 (1989): 39-42. 

33. Danzig, R., "Toward the Creation of a
Complementary, Decentralized System of Criminal 
Justice," Stanford Law Review, 1973. 

34. For example, see Felstiner, W., "Influence of
Social Organization on Dispute Processing," 9 Law 
and Society Review 63 (1974).

------------------------------

Chapter 6 

Observations Regarding the Current Status of the
Community Mediation Field

------------------------------

Key Points

o This chapter provides a rough balance sheet of
the accomplishments and problems of the community
mediation field. It draws from the broad array of
material in the preceding five chapters. Different
observers will, no doubt, perceive the field's
achievements and challenges differently depending
on their vision of what the field should
accomplish, has accomplished, and can accomplish in
the future.

o The community mediation field generated a great
deal of commentary from public officials, scholars, 
bar association leaders, practitioners, and others
during its early years. The field has apparently
exceeded the initial expectations of such observers
in at least six areas:
 
- 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.

o The community mediation field also failed to
exceed some expectations that were quite 
widespread at the field's inception:
  
- 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.

o This chapter identifies six needs confronting the
field and examines ways they might be addressed by
various participants at the national, State, and
local levels:
 
- 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;
and
 
- the need for additional attention to underserved
States.

------------------------------

Experimentation with community mediation programs
has proceeded for more than two decades, and programs
have been implemented in many jurisdictions across
the nation. The earlier chapters of this report
have described the evolution of the field; the
diversity of cases handled; the infrastructure of
national, State, and local organizations supporting
program development and refinement; research
findings regarding program accomplishments; and
major issues confronting the field. 

The aim of this chapter is to extract from the
broad array of observations presented earlier in
this report a general understanding of the 
community mediation field's current
status-both its major achievements and its
problems. Based on this analysis, 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 are
discussed. Needless to say, different observers of
this field would inevitably arrive at varying
assessments of the field's current status and
prospects if they carried out the same exercise.
One of the most invigorating features of the
community mediation field has been the lively
spirit of debate that has prevailed since its
inception. It is important, however, to seek to
gain a general view of where the field is now in
order to foster discussion regarding where it may
be, and should be, headed in the future. 

The Current State of the Field 

One useful approach to help understand the current
status of the community mediation field is to
compare systematically the field's experiences over
the past two decades to initial expectations that
were repeatedly asserted at the field's inception.
Such an approach can help reveal what has
apparently worked well and what has not and can
also highlight major unanticipated and unintended
outcomes that have arisen. This section summarizes
those areas in which the field appears to have
exceeded initial expectations and those areas in
which it fell short. 

Areas In Which Initial Expectations Were Exceeded 

The community mediation field generated a great
deal of commentary from public officials, 
scholars, bar association leaders, practitioners, 
and others during its early years.[1] 
This section presents a sampling of initial 
expectations of such observers
that were apparently exceeded by subsequent
developments in the community mediation field. 

The Field Has Survived and the Number of Programs
Has Grown Dramatically 

Some observers labeled the community mediation
field a fad in its early days and often asserted
that programs were simply a by-product 
of the availability of Federal Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration funding.[2] Such
observers predicted that once the Federal funding
dried up, so would community mediation programs. 
The exhibits presented in chapter 1,
demonstrating the growth of programs across the
nation, flatly refute this prediction for the
field. 

As was discussed in previous chapters, State and
local governments, the United Way, foundations, 
and other funders have actively supported 
community mediation programs and picked 
up the torch from the Federal government. 
(The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration 
itself turned out to be mortal, however, 
and was terminated in the early 1980s.)
This funding support has been generated because
many policymakers and funders perceive mediation
programs to be effective forums for resolving
conflict. In addition, it is clear that mediation 
program directors and leaders of Statewide 
associations of programs have been energetic,
creative, and sophisticated in their fundraising
efforts. The accomplishments of the Mediation
Network of North Carolina in lobbying the North
Carolina State legislature (discussed in chapter 3)
illustrate the potential effectiveness of State
associations. The fundraising work of the Peninsula
Conflict Resolution Center of San Mateo County,
California (reviewed in chapter 5)
demonstrates how individual programs can raise
necessary funding in creative ways. 

Programs Have Markedly Diversified the Range of
Their Services 

Early proponents of the community mediation field
anticipated that community mediation programs would
diversify and broaden the types of cases that they
handle.[3] The actual expansion of the breadth of
the field has certainly surpassed the expectations
of all but the most optimistic community mediation
proponents in the 1970s. In addition to handling
diverse caseloads of minor interpersonal criminal 
and civil matters, mediation programs have branched 
out into a remarkable number of new areas. 

As was reviewed in chapter 2, mediation programs
now facilitate the handling of major public policy
issues in many jurisdictions, such as school
district mergers and facility siting issues. As was
discussed earlier in this report, the Orange County
Dispute Settlement Center has a full-time staff
member devoted to such public policy dispute
processing. Programs have also increasingly begun
to handle intergroup conflicts, including such
extremely important matters as emerging disputes
among youth gangs. The work of the New Mexico
Center for Dispute Resolution illustrates this new
emphasis, and such interventions can be critical in
forestalling violent confrontations. 

The key role of community mediation programs in
fostering school-based conflict resolution and 
student peer mediation programs is one of the 
field's most striking accomplishments. Such 
programs are now in operation in more than 
5,000 elementary and secondary schools nationwide. 
In many communities, the local community 
mediation center was the catalyst for 
school-based program development;
these programs often provided the technical
assistance and training to make programs a reality.
The National Association for Mediation in Education
(NAME) (now the Conflict Resolution Education
Network of NIDR) has also made critical
contributions to the field, and this organization
was founded by community mediation leaders. 

Community mediation programs have also played an
important role in the mediation of domestic 
relations and custody disputes. Private family 
mediators play a critical role in this component 
of the mediation field as well, and the Academy 
of Family Mediators provides valuable support to 
this area of practice.

Impressive State-Level Support Mechanisms for
Programs Have Emerged

When the community mediation field began, the
field's leadership came primarily from local
program developers (government officials, 
including judges and prosecutors, and
private individuals) and from national 
organizations (the American Bar Association, 
the U.S. Department of Justice, and others). 
The role of such program developers has 
been discussed earlier. As the field
has matured, State associations of programs and
State governmental agencies charged with
encouraging community mediation have
played an increasingly important role in the field.
Detailed examples of such endeavors are provided in
chapter 3. 

This growth of State-level organizations has been
critical to the institutionalization of community
mediation in a number of States. The State
associations and governmental agencies provide
programs with technical assistance and training,
sponsor conferences for participants in the field, 
and work to obtain State legislative funding for program
operations. The role of such organizations in
Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North
Carolina, and Ohio are reviewed in detail in
chapter 3. 

Nonprofit Community Mediation Programs Are
Increasingly Prevalent 

At the inception of the community mediation field,
many observers anticipated that two basic types of
community mediation program sponsorship would
predominate: programs would either be
sponsored by government agencies (primarily the
courts, prosecutors' offices, and city 
governments) or they would be sponsored by 
nonprofit community organizations. Both variants 
still exist, and either certainly can provide 
high-quality services to disputants if 
properly administered. 

Over time, the nonprofit model has grown to be more
prevalent than government sponsorship of community
mediation programs. A number of factors have
supported this evolution. First, States providing
funding for community mediation have often
stipulated that programs must be sponsored by
nonprofit agencies with community advisory 
boards (for instance, New York and
Michigan). These States decided that such
sponsorship would make projects closer to the
community and more flexible in operations 
and in raising additional funds. Second,
the trend toward diversification of services in
this field has virtually required that programs
seeking diversification be sponsored by nonprofits
that are able to work on a wide variety of types of
cases. A program sponsored by one component of the
justice system (for example, the prosecutor's
office) is not well positioned to diversify into
public policy disputes and other areas far afield
from the immediate interests of the agency. State
associations of programs and the National
Association for Community Mediation have also
fostered the spread of nonprofit- sponsored
programs that can be structured to be highly
responsive to community concerns through the input
of community advisory boards. While less likely to
sponsor a community mediation center that processes
a diverse array of conflicts, government agencies
are sponsoring many specialized dispute resolution
mechanisms (for example, custody and visitation
mediation in family courts, landlord/tenant
mediation in housing courts, and arbitration,
settlement conferences, and related 
dispute resolution processes for civil cases). 

Comparative Research Findings Regarding Dispute
Resolution Processes Are Impressive 

At the outset of the community mediation field,
expectations regarding likely program
accomplishments ranged from extremely optimistic to
comparably pessimistic. As chapter 4 indicates,
research findings regarding disputant perceptions
of mediation processes, satisfaction with mediated
agreements, and related measures tend to be very
favorable. Much additional research is needed, of
course, but existing findings comparing mediation
to court case processing typically tend to favor
mediation. For the most part, studies suggest that
mediation programs are perceived by disputants to
deliver a high quality of justice and to facilitate
understanding of the conflict and the opposing
party. 

Research findings regarding community mediation
program impacts on court caseloads and costs are 
far less impressive, as noted in chapter 4. This 
topic is examined in the discussion of areas in which
expectations for community mediation programs were
not exceeded. 

The Field Has Increasing International Dimensions 

Early articles dealing with community mediation
often noted the prevalence of informal dispute
resolution mechanisms in certain foreign settings
(such as African tribal moots, Chinese people's
mediation committees, and the like).[4] For the
most part, however, the community mediation 
movement evolved in its early years as a purely 
domestic American enterprise. 

As noted in chapter 5, international interest in
American community mediation experiments has increased.
American community mediation leaders have begun to 
provide technical assistance and 
training in such diverse foreign locales as
Nicaragua, Russia, South Africa, Australia, and
Turkey. The U.S. Agency for International
Development has begun to encourage the development
of alternative dispute resolution programs in
nations implementing justice system reforms. 

The flow of information back from other nations to
the United States has also increased. Many
international conferences have begun to include
panels regarding community mediation, which allows
for a sharing of perspectives between American and
foreign practitioners in this field. The New Zealand
experiments with restorative justice mechanisms
(such as family group conferencing, a process with
some marked similarities to mediation) are also
receiving considerable attention within the United
States, and a number of jurisdictions are seeking
to replicate such programs. 

Areas In Which Expectations Were Not Exceeded 

The community mediation field has also failed to
exceed some expectations that were quite widespread
at the field's inception. 

Public Awareness of Community Mediation Continues
To Be Relatively Low 

Some early proponents of the field anticipated that
gradually, over time, community mediation programs
would become highly visible to the public and
become part of everyday experience and
knowledge.[5] This simply has not happened. Some
components of the overall alternative dispute
resolution field have become increasingly 
visible--for example, divorce mediation and
school-based conflict resolution programs--but
community mediation programs, for the most part, have 
not become widely known. Survey data would be helpful
to rigorously support the observation that programs
have low visibility, but the low level of
visibility of programs does not make them a high-
profile candidate for inclusion in national
surveys. 

There are a number of apparent reasons for the low
level of community mediation program visibility
outside of the circle of people directly exposed to
them (disputants, court personnel, and so on).
First, despite the fact that programs deal with a
compelling topic, conflict, the print and broadcast
media have paid minimal attention to them. Second,
program caseloads are still relatively small, which
limits the proportion of citizens in any locale
with direct exposure to programs. Third, extensive
public information campaigns at the national,
State, or local level are very rare. The experience
of some of the early community mediation programs
with such campaigns may have had a chilling effect
on their use. For example, the Los Angeles
Venice/Mar Vista Neighborhood Justice Center 
engaged in an aggressive campaign of
public service ads on local radio stations. They
also set up booths at shopping centers and on the
beach from which mediation program brochures were
distributed. The publicity resulted in an avalanche
of telephone and walk-in inquiries, most of them
for legal assistance with filing divorce papers,
combating evictions, and other legal matters more
suitable for a legal services office. 

The relatively low visibility of community
mediation programs can have a number of adverse
consequences for programs. Citizens who are unaware
of programs will not know to turn to them for
assistance when disputes arise and may resist
referrals to mediation from the police, 
courts, and social services. In addition, 
legislators and other potential funders
are less likely to provide support for programs if
they are not aware of their accomplishments and do
not feel that programs are well known and have
widespread support from the community. The discussion 
of next steps later in this chapter reviews potential
strategies for increasing public awareness of
community mediation programs. 

Funding for Individual Programs Continues To Be Low
and Precarious 

Many proponents of community mediation programs
anticipated that individual centers would typically
have sufficient funding to support administrative,
intake, outreach, and clerical staff, and would
have staff capacity to handle quite large caseloads
and mount substantial new initiatives. Federally
funded experimental programs 20 years ago had
annual budgets of approximately $200,000 (a figure 
that, of course, would be far higher today after 
adjusting for two decades of inflation). 

As was discussed in chapter 1, present-day programs
typically do not approach such levels of funding.
The most common current budget range for programs,
based on the findings of the National
Association for Community Mediation survey, was
$50,000 to $150,000, with 49% of programs falling in 
this category. The next most common range was less 
than $50,000, with 29 percent of programs represented.
Only 10 percent of programs had budgets of more
than $300,000-a level roughly comparable to the
level of common early expectations in the field. 

Interpreting the meaning of budget levels is not
simple. Clearly, budget levels will vary as a
function of the size of communities and local
available caseloads. Every program does not need to
be big. It is also important to stress that low
levels of program funding in this field do not
necessarily lead to disputants' receiving low-
quality services. In fact, since mediators are
typically volunteer community members, programs can
maintain large pools of highly trained, highly
qualified mediators with limited budgets. 

Limited program budgets do have a number of
important adverse consequences, however. First,
staff members tend to be grossly underpaid for the
amount, importance, and quality of work they
perform. Community mediation personnel deal with
many interpersonal and intergroup conflicts 
that could easily escalate into violence. Their 
work is stressful and important to the life of their
community. Their jobs are arguably far more
important, by virtually any measure of value to
society, than those of employees making four to
five times their salaries. Low salaries inevitably
lead to higher levels of turnover at programs than
would occur if salaries were more commensurate with
staff responsibilities. Such turnover can cripple
programs while new directors and staff are being
recruited and trained. 

Second, low budgets limit the ability of programs
to conduct aggressive outreach to obtain case
referrals and hamper efforts to thoroughly screen
cases prior to hearings for any features that would
make them unsuitable for mediation. As was noted in
chapter 1, 56 percent of programs have three or
fewer staff members. A typical staff configuration
for programs is a director, a case intake and
referral specialist, and an administrative staff
person responsible for clerical functions,
scheduling hearings, and related tasks. Programs
with two employees typically have a director and a
person who combines the roles of intake and
administrative staff member. Such staff
configurations do not provide the capacity to
conduct extensive outreach. Needless to say, when
one staff member is sick or on vacation, the
program is even more limited in its capacities to
perform any more than routine daily functions. 

In addition to being too low, program funding also
tends to be precarious. Programs have demonstrated
remarkable energy and creativity in raising funds
to maintain existing operations. Such fundraising
activity is inevitably stressful, however, and
takes away from staff time that could be devoted to
services to mediators and disputants and to efforts
to expand the program. Mechanisms to provide
programs with more stable as well as larger budgets
would be very helpful. Strategies for improving
program funding are discussed later in this
chapter. 

It should be noted that an alternative perspective
regarding program staff sizes and budgets is
possible. Some observers would, no doubt, argue
that comparison of current program budgets with the
initial expectations of program developers at the
outset of the field is misguided. Instead of
finding that current budgets are too low, this
perspective would suggest that initial expectations
and model program funding levels were simply too
high, resulting in Cadillac budgets for programs
that in reality only could, and should, live on
subcompact-level budgets. The argument at the core
of this approach is that current program budgets
reflect what the market for services will honestly
sustain, and that the 10 percent of programs with
far higher budgets either are more effective
entrepreneurially or have special local conditions.

Furthermore, the argument can be made that when low
budgets limit the number of paid staff members, it
is possible to place further responsibility and
control in the hands of local volunteer
community mediators--an outcome that may be desired.

Proponents of community mediation programs are
likely to reject the alternative perspective
presented above. The major by-products of current
low budgets--overworked staff, limited capacity for
outreach and increased referrals, and high staff
turnover--would seem to ensure that budgets will
stay low at many programs because staff members 
will not have the time or energy to seek changes. 
Current staff resources seem remarkably low to 
many observers, particularly in a nation in which 
conflict itself is a growth industry. Recommendations 
about how to break this cycle of low budgets leading to 
more low budgets are provided in the final section 
of this chapter. 

Program Caseloads Are Lower Than Initially Expected
and Impacts on Justice System Caseloads Are Lower Than
Anticipated 

Many initial program planners in this field
anticipated that community mediation programs 
would eventually handle very large caseloads of 
interpersonal disputes-a significant portion of 
relevant court cases, as well as, many important 
conflicts that never reached the courts but nonetheless 
have the potential to harm disputants and others. For 
the most part, this expectation has not been confirmed.

Perhaps the most rigorous study addressing this
question, the University of North Carolina
Institute of Government's evaluation study
discussed in chapter 4, found that in three North
Carolina counties with community mediation
programs, only 22.8 percent of cases that were
technically eligible for mediation were actually
sent to mediation.[6] The researchers who conducted
this evaluation noted that programs needed to be far
more aggressive in outreach efforts with the courts
and other referral agencies. The relatively low
caseloads of programs have resulted in limited
impacts on court caseloads and costs, as was
discussed in chapter 4. Chapter 5 noted similar low
levels of referrals from the police and examined
factors affecting such referrals. 

A number of factors have contributed to the
relatively low levels of referrals to community
mediation programs. First, as was noted in the
preceding section, low project budgets make it
difficult for many programs to develop close,
ongoing referral ties with the local police and the
courts. In the absence of such outreach and
referral work, case referrals are likely to remain
low. Second, the diversification of the activities
of community mediation programs has further drawn
programs away from developing extensive
referral linkages with justice system agencies.
Some diversification activities involve training (for
example, for school-based mediation), 
technical assistance (such as for local
companies wishing to establish grievance
mechanisms), and meeting facilitation 
(for instance, processing public disputes). 
These activities may provide programs with 
significant fees that are essential to program
survival given the typically low budgets discussed
previously. In light of the limited resources
available to programs, it is not surprising that
staff often focus their energy on those activities
that can generate contracts and fees to keep the
program afloat. This incentive system can virtually
guarantee, however, that programs will not place
the additional emphasis on justice system referral
mechanisms called for by the Institute of
Government evaluators until government or private
funders encourage increased attention to obtaining
referrals from the police, prosecutors, and courts,
where a significant portion of societal disputes
surface. 

The problems that programs have obtaining referrals
lead to something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. To
the extent that program activities do not lead to
significant reductions in court caseloads or costs,
the government is hesitant to pour considerable
resources into programs. But without significant
resources, programs will find it difficult to focus
on generating high levels of referrals from the
courts and will continue to invest energies in
those fee-bearing activities that enhance program
survival. The Institute of Government researchers
reported that the community mediation program in
their sample that processed the highest proportion
of technically eligible cases from the local courts
(34.2 percent) was the only one that appeared to
have significantly reduced the number of court
trials in its jurisdiction (based on a comparison
with a matched county that lacked a mediation
program). This finding suggests that aggressive
outreach to obtain referrals can have an impact on
the courts. The degree to which individuals in the
community mediation field lack optimism regarding
such impacts is reflected in the often heard 
statement, "It doesn't matter if programs affect 
justice system caseloads; the important thing is 
that they deliver a higher quality of justice and 
are justified due to that achievement regardless of
other impacts." The data in chapter 4 strongly
suggest that mediation can lead to improvements in
the quality of justice when compared with court
processing of similar cases. The question of
whether or not community mediation programs can 
ultimately affect court caseloads still seems to be 
open in light of the Institute of Government research 
findings. 

One additional adverse consequence of low caseloads
should be noted. In some programs, mediation
caseloads are sufficiently low and the pool of
mediators is sufficiently large that volunteer
mediators rarely have the opportunity to mediate
cases. This is harmful for a number of reasons.
Mediators' skills diminish if they do not have the
opportunity to handle cases. Material taught in
mediation training is forgotten. Perhaps even more
important, mediators can become very dissatisfied
if they do not have the opportunity to mediate
cases and may drop out of the mediation pool
altogether to find a volunteer activity that is
more fulfilling. 

The most important adverse consequence of low
caseloads is straightforward. If the studies 
reviewed in chapter 4, are correct in 
suggesting that mediation programs deliver 
a higher quality of justice than the 
courts do for many types of interpersonal
disputes, then inadequate referral mechanisms are
depriving citizens of access to a superior process
for dealing with their conflicts. The
understandable internal incentives that programs
confront to maintain their operations inhibit their
ability to serve the many citizens who could
apparently benefit greatly from their services. 

Programs Tend To Be Concentrated in a Relatively
Small Number of States 

Proponents of community mediation programs have
long argued that such programs are suitable for
conflicts in any setting, urban or rural,
regardless of locale. Community mediation programs
have been developed in every region of the nation,
but programs tend to be concentrated in a
relatively small number of States. Two-thirds of
the community mediation programs that are included
in the National Association for Community Mediation
Directory (146 of the 222 programs) are located in
only 12 States. In rank order these States are
California, New York, North Carolina, Michigan,
Massachusetts, Texas, Washington, Oregon, Virginia,
Minnesota, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania. Many of
these States have large populations, and their
combined population constitutes 47 percent of the
total population of the United States. 

The disproportionate representation of programs
across States is not surprising. The presence of
particularly active and effective mediation
proponents in some States, combined, in some
instances, with the emergence of Statewide
associations, Statewide funding programs, and
related support mechanisms, makes it inevitable
that some States will develop programs more rapidly
than others. Nevertheless, many community mediation
leaders would like, over time, to foster the
development of programs in those States that have
few or no programs. (Six States have no programs
listed in the NAFCM directory and another 15 States
have only one program.) Recommendations are 
provided later in this chapter for strategies to 
enhance the spread of mediation programs to areas 
where few or no programs are available. 

Needs for the Community Mediation Field in the
Coming Years 

In light of the above analysis of the apparent
achievements and problems of the community
mediation field, a number of major needs of the
field require attention. 

The Need for Increased Public Education Regarding
Community Mediation 

As was discussed, public awareness of community
mediation mechanisms is low, and this is likely 
to bring with it an array of problems for programs, 
including reduced caseloads and a reduced probability of
receiving funding support. Public information
campaigns at the national, State, and local levels
may help remedy these problems. The National
Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM) is 
well positioned to work in this area. 
With its broad representation of programs, 
it can serve as a voice for programs
nationally. NAFCM and others can develop public
information materials, perhaps with the support of
Federal or foundation funding, and can develop
strategies for dissemination of the material
through public service announcements, television
programs, the print media, and elsewhere. 

In addition to a formal public information
campaign, measures of the sort carried out by the
National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) to
publicize crime prevention initiatives may be
helpful to the community mediation field. The NCPC
encourages media coverage of crime prevention 
innovations and also briefs legislators and 
other policymakers regarding developments in 
that area. The National Association
for Community Mediation can play a similar
proactive role in the community mediation field. 

High-visibility recognition of the accomplishments
of community mediation programs would be very
helpful to the stature of the field. A community
mediators' awards ceremony conducted by the
President, the U.S. Attorney General, or State
Governors or State Attorneys General could bring
useful attention to the role of such programs in
resolving conflict. Dramatic examples of mediation
hearings that intervened in and halted escalating
interpersonal or intergroup disputes would be
likely to attract media coverage. 

The Need for Increased Program Funding 

The many problems associated with relatively low
levels of program funding were discussed previously. 
Chapter 5 presents a number of suggestions for ways 
to increase program funding. Community mediation
program directors have extensive
experience in this area, and the topic is a
perennial favorite at most mediation conferences. 

In a time of governmental economic austerity, the
very thought of relying on increased public
resources for funding seems daunting. But it must
be stressed that the overall annual level of
funding for community mediation nationwide is
remarkably low-approximately $50 million per year. 
This level is lower than the funding level originally
contemplated by Congress for the Dispute Resolution
Act in 1979-a bill that would have provided $60
million to the U.S. Department of Justice to fund
innovative community mediation programs. Another
useful benchmark against which current annual 
expenditures on community mediation can be measured 
is the more than $1 billion being granted annually 
to localities across the nation to support community 
policing. The annual budget for community mediation 
programs from all sources is less than 5 percent 
of the total Federal budget for community policing 
grants. 

Despite the obvious barriers, the National
Association for Community Mediation and others 
may wish to consider seeking Federal or State 
funds, or both, for community mediation programs 
to help address the problem of low and precarious 
program funding. Such funding would need to pay only a
portion of program expenses. Mediation programs have a 
long history of leveraging governmental funds to obtain
additional funding from foundations, the United
Way, and fees for service. For example, the total
amount of State funding awarded to the State of New
York's community mediation programs, which serve
all of the State's counties, was $3.3 million in
1996-97. As was discussed in chapter 5, by statute,
programs are limited to receiving no more than 50
percent of their annual budget from the State's
Community Dispute Resolution Centers Program; the
remainder of the funds must be raised from local
sources. 

State associations of programs can engage in
legislative fundraising activities following 
the successful approach used by the Mediation 
Network of North Carolina, which was discussed in 
chapter 3. The Mediation Network informed 
legislators in detail regarding the contributions 
community mediation programs made to their 
districts. The network also provided 
concrete proposals for funding and has
worked closely with the State's Administrative
Office of the Courts to ensure that data regarding
the accomplishments arising from the State
appropriations are clearly documented for each
program receiving such funds. 

The Need for Improved Intake and Referral
Mechanisms and Increased Caseloads 

The problems contributing to low caseloads and then
subsequently arising from them were discussed
previously. The directors and advisory boards of
local programs need to give serious
consideration to ways of improving case referral
mechanisms involving local social service and
justice system agencies. Current funding patterns
appear to play an important role in focusing the
resources of many community mediation programs on
diversification initiatives that can generate
contract or fee revenue. Increased funding, perhaps
from public sources, could enable programs to be
much more aggressive in seeking referrals from
justice system agencies such as the police,
prosecutors, and the courts. Such increased
mediation referrals could benefit the justice
system agencies and the community at large and
would appear to be a proper public investment of
funds. Intensive research should be conducted along
the line of the Institute of Government evaluation
discussed earlier, to determine if programs that
receive and mediate a high proportion of
technically eligible cases from referral sources
also cause reduced workloads for those
governmental agencies. 

The Need for Enhanced Training of Program Directors

The combined challenges posed by the need to
increase public awareness, funding levels, and
caseloads strongly suggest the need for enhanced
training of community mediation program directors.
National groups, State associations, and other
organizations can take the lead in designing
training curricula for program directors. 
Some of the current types of training
available were discussed in chapter 3. 

The Need for Further Research To Improve
Understanding of Program Processes and Outcomes 

The review of existing research in chapter 4
indicates the many gaps in our knowledge of the
critical processes and outcomes of community
mediation programs. A number of relatively rigorous
studies of programs were commissioned early in the
life of the community mediation movement. The Ford
Foundation Fund for Research on Dispute 
Resolution and the State Justice Institute 
provided an additional commitment of research 
funds over the years, although studies
supported by both organizations have dealt with the
full array of dispute resolution mechanisms, with
community mediation being only one variety among
many. The Ford Foundation Fund is no longer in 
operation. 

Additional research on community mediation could
enhance understanding of how such programs should 
be shaped to best serve their communities and might 
also generate findings that could lead to additional
operational funding support of programs from
policymakers. Appendix C reviews research questions
that need to be addressed. 

The Need for Additional Attention to Underserved
States 

As was discussed earlier, community mediation
programs tend to be concentrated in roughly one-
fourth of the States. National organizations 
in the field may wish to consider ways 
to foster the development of programs in
States that have few or no community mediation
programs. A variety of strategies can be used,
including: (1) jointly sponsored conferences in
such States with relevant nonprofit groups, city
and State justice system agencies and bar
associations, and local governments; (2) the
development of technical assistance and training
teams that can help local jurisdictions in such
States begin programs at low cost; and (3) public
funding of relatively inexpensive experimental
programs by State and city governments. 

Conclusion 

This chapter provided a rough balance sheet
reflecting the accomplishments and problems of 
the community mediation field. As was noted at 
the outset, different observers of the field will, 
no doubt, perceive its achievements and challenges
differently, depending on their vision of what the
field should, has, and can accomplish. 

Based on the analysis presented in this chapter,
six needs confronting the field and ways they might be
addressed by various participants at the national,
State, and local levels were examined. As was noted 
earlier, the effort to seek an overview of the field's 
achievements and problems can foster discussion about 
how and why the field has evolved the way it has 
and where it may be, and should be, headed. 

Community mediation programs represent, in tangible
form, the embodiment of many of the core principles
favored by many citizens, including local 
initiative, volunteerism, combating violence, 
private/public partnerships, cooperation among 
people representative of the full diversity of 
the community, problem-solving of the type 
embodied in community policing, and national 
collaboration so that communities can learn 
from one another. 

The field also has many paradoxical features. Long
ago, Professor Roger Fisher of Harvard Law School
captured one of these paradoxes by characterizing 
the community mediation field as one in which the 
need for services by the society was very great 
but for which public demand was relatively low.[7] 
As the society becomes ever more complex and 
diverse, the need for community mediation can 
only grow. One of the great challenges for the 
community mediation field is to ensure that 
the great societal need is converted into a 
commensurate, legitimate level of demand
through enhanced public awareness of the
availability of mediation services and,
furthermore, that sufficient societal resources are
allocated to meet the demand for community conflict
resolution in the coming century. 

Endnotes 

1. See Sander, F., Alternative Methods of Dispute
Settlement: A Selected Bibliography, Washington,
DC: American Bar Association. This bibliography has 
been periodically updated and presents a broad array 
of books and articles from the dispute resolution
field. 

2. For example, see essays in Feeley, M., and R.
Tomasic, eds., Neighborhood Justice: Assessment of
an Emerging Idea, New York: Longman Press, 1981. 

3. See Cook, R., J. Roehl, and D. Sheppard,
Neighborhood Justice Centers Field Test: Final
Evaluation Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1980. 

4. For example, see Felstiner, W., and L. Williams,
"Mediation as an Alternative to Criminal
Prosecution," 2 Law and Human Behavior 223 (1978). 

5. See essays in 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. See also
observations by Fuller, L., "Mediation-Its Forms
and Functions," 44 Southern California Law Review 
305 (1971); and Fuller, L., "The Forms and Limits of
Adjudication," 92 Harvard Law Review 353 (1979). 

6. Clarke, S., E. Valence, and R. Mace, Mediation
of Interpersonal Disputes: An Evaluation of North
Carolina's Programs, Chapel Hill: Institute of
Government, 1992. 

7. Fisher, R., personal communication, April 1980. 

------------------------------

Appendix A 

Sources of Additional Information Regarding Dispute
Resolution Mechanisms

The National Institute for Dispute Resolution
(NIDR) has produced a useful Compendium of State Court
Resource Materials that includes the results of a
number of national surveys of dispute resolution
practices, statutes, court rules, and related
information.[1] This information can be helpful for
community dispute resolution centers that are
interested in diversifying the types of disputes
they handle. 

The Compendium is a companion volume to NIDR's
Conflict Resolution Institute for Courts Conference
Notebook.[2] The Conference Notebook was
distributed to 1995 conference
participants and provides informative discussions
on such topics as: strategies for case management;
the selection, training, and evaluation of
community mediators and staff; confidentiality and
related issues; program management approaches; and
planning strategies. The authors of the Conference
Notebook are Charles Bethel and Melinda Ostermeyer.
They provide useful, practical guidance for
programs that are operated directly by the courts,
as well as for private community mediation
programs, bar associations, private 
practitioners, and others who receive 
referrals from the courts. 

The Compendium includes findings from an NIDR
survey of the 50 States regarding dispute
resolution programs, services, policies,
legislation, and rules. For example, the survey
indicates whether justice systems in each State
routinely or on a case-by-case basis refer the
following types of cases to dispute resolution
processes: neighborhood (precourt filing),
criminal, small claims, landlord/tenant, 
juvenile, divorce, general civil,
complex civil, and probate. 

In addition, the Compendium presents a summary of
selected confidentiality legislation by scope and
jurisdiction for the 50 States, excerpted from
Nancy Rogers and Craig McEwen's book Mediation,
Law, Policy, and Practice.[3] The summary cites
specific statutes and indicates the information
covered, how mediation is defined, who may assert
or waive confidentiality provisions, limitations on
use of disclosure, and the types of evidence to
which the statutory provisions apply. 

The Compendium also presents a detailed summary of
significant mediation legislation by topic and
jurisdiction. Bruce Brodigan of the American Bar
Association's Section on Dispute Resolution
provided some of the material for this summary to
supplement the work of the NIDR researchers. The
summary presents references to statutes dealing
with the mediation of a wide variety of types of
cases, including labor, family, environment, and
others. In addition, references are provided to
statutes that deal with confidentiality, mediator
liability, mandatory use of mediation, the
enforcement of mediated agreements, qualifications
of mediators, and administration of program funding. 

NIDR has also included a summary of mediation
activities in the States, excerpted from Mediation
U.S.A-1994 by Peter Chantilis, a private dispute
resolution practitioner in Dallas, Texas.[4] This
summary indicates the types of mediation being
conducted in the States surveyed. 

The Compendium includes a listing of the names,
addresses, and telephone numbers of contact people
from the National Council of State Dispute
Resolution Programs and a similar listing of
contacts for State court dispute resolution
programs. 

The National Center for State Courts is developing
a database of dispute resolution-related State
legislation, court rules, policies, and procedures 
used by court systems and individual courts. The data 
collection is being funded by a grant from the State 
Justice Institute. This information should 
be particularly useful to justice system-based 
community mediation programs and may also be
helpful to programs sponsored by nonprofit
agencies. 

The National Association for Community Mediation
(NAFCM) has recently published a membership directory 
with useful profiles of more than 200 community
mediation programs. NAFCM also publishes 
an informative newsletter regarding
developments in the field, and plans to publish
additional technical assistance materials. 

Endnotes 

1. Filner, J., M. Ostermeyer, and C. Bethel,
Compendium of State Court Resource Materials,
Washington, DC: National Institute for Dispute
Resolution, 1995. 

2. Bethel, C., and M. Ostermeyer, Conflict
Resolution Institute for Courts Conference
Notebook, Washington, DC: National Institute of
Justice, 1995. 

3. Rogers, N. and C. McEwen, Mediation, Law,
Policy, and Practice, 2d edition, 
Deerfield, IL: Clark Boardman Callaghan, 1994. 

4. Chantilis, P., "Mediation U.S.A.-1994," in
Filner, Ostermeyer, and Bethel, Compendium of State
Court Resource Materials. 

------------------------------

Appendix B 

Selected Resources for Community Mediation Programs

National Organizations 

American Arbitration Association 
140 West 51st Street 
New York, NY 10020 
Phone: (212) 484-4000 
Fax: (212) 765-4878 
President: William K. Slate II

American Bar Association 
Section of Dispute Resolution 
740 15th Street, NW 
Washington, DC 20005 
Phone: (202) 662-1720 
Fax: (202) 662-1755 
Executive Director: Howard Davidson

National Association for Community Mediation 
1726 M Street NW, Suite 500 
Washington, DC 20036 
Phone: (202) 467-6226 
Fax: (202) 466-4769 
Executive Director: Larry Ray

National Conference on Peacemaking and 
Conflict Resolution
Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution 
George Mason University 
4260 Chain Bridge Road 
Fairfax, VA 22030 
Phone: (703) 993-1300 
Fax: (703) 993-1302 
Executive Director N.C.P.C.R.: Linda Baron 
Executive Director I.C.A.R.: Keven Clements

National Institute for Dispute Resolution 
1726 M Street NW, Suite 500 
Washington, DC 20036-4502 
Phone: (202) 466-4764 
Fax: (202) 466-4769 
President: Margery Baker

Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution 
815 15th Street NW, Suite 530 
Washington, DC 20005 
Phone: (202) 783-7277 
Fax: (202) 783-7281 
Acting Executive Director: Paco Martinez 

Federal Agencies 

Community Relations Service 
U.S. Department of Justice 
600 E Street NW, Suite 2000 
Washington, DC 20530 
Phone: (202) 305-2950 
Fax: (202) 305-3009 
Program Director: Jonathan Chace 

National Criminal Justice Reference Service 
PO Box 6000 Rockville, MD 20849-6000 
Phone: (800) 851-3420

National Institute of Justice U.S. Department of
Justice 
633 Indiana Avenue NW Washington, DC 20531 
Phone: (202) 616-3234 
Fax: (202) 307-6394 
Program Manager: Carolyn Peake 

Selected State Organizations Cited in This Report 

Connecticut Community Mediation Network 
c/o Community Mediation, Inc. 
134 Grand Avenue 
New Haven, CT 06513 
Phone: (203) 782-3500 
Fax: (203) 782-3503 
Executive Director: Charles A. Pillsbury 

Mediation Centers of Hawaii 
c/o Neighborhood Justice Center of Honolulu, Inc. 
200 North Vineyard Boulevard, Suite 320 
Honolulu, HI 96817 
Phone: (808) 521-6767 
Fax: (808) 538-1454 
Administrator: Benjamin L. Carroll

Massachusetts Association of Mediation Programs and
Practitioners 
133 Federal Street, 5th Floor 
Boston, MA 02110 
Phone: (617) 451-2093 
Fax: (617) 451-0763 
Contact: Melissa Brodrick

Mediation Program 
Administrative Office 
District Court Department of the  Trial Court of
Massachusetts Holyoke Square 
Salem, MA 01970 
Phone: (508) 745-9010 
Fax: (508) 745-9019 
Director: Albie Davis

Community Dispute Resolution Program 
State Court Administrative Office 
Michigan Supreme Court 
309 North Washington Square 
Lansing, MI 48909 
Phone: (517) 373-0130 
Fax: (517) 373-8922 
Director: Douglas A. Van Epps

New Mexico Mediation Association 
P.O. Box 82384 
Albuquerque, NM 87198 
Phone: (505) 881-1141 
Contact: Lynn Billings

Community Dispute Resolution Centers Program 
New York State Unified Court System 
PO Box 7039 
Alfred E. Smith Office Building 
Albany, NY 12225 
Phone: (518) 473-4160 
Fax: (518) 473-6861 
Acting Coordinator: Mark Collins 

New York State Dispute Resolution Association 
244 Hudson Avenue 
Albany, NY 12210 
Phone: (518) 465-2500 
Fax: (518) 465-0840 
Executive Director: Lisa Hicks

New York State Mediation Association 
c/o Westchester Mediation Center 
P.O. Box 1248 
Yonkers, NY 10702 
Phone: (914) 963-6440 
Fax: (914) 963-4566 
Executive Director: Douglas Brian

Mediation Network of North Carolina 
P.O. Box 241 
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-0241 
Phone: (919) 929-6333 
Fax: (919) 933-4465 
Executive Director: Scott Bradley

Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and Conflict
Management 
77 South High Street, 24th Floor 
Columbus, OH 43266 
Phone: (614) 752-9595 
Fax: (614) 752-9682 
Executive Director: Chris Carlson 

Local Programs Cited in This Report 

Berkeley Dispute Resolution Service 
1769 Alcatraz Avenue 
Berkeley, CA 94703 
Phone: (510) 428-1811 
Fax: (510) 428-1943 
Executive Director: Laura Bresler

Los Angeles County Bar Association Dispute
Resolution Service, Inc.
617 South Olive Street, Suite 610 
Los Angeles, CA 90014 
Phone: (213) 896-6533 
Fax: (213) 627-1426 
Executive Director: Lauren Burton

Conciliation Forums of Oakland 
663 13th Street, Suite 100 
Oakland, CA 94612 
Phone: (510) 763-2117 
Fax: (510) 763-7098 
Executive Director: Ruth Baxley

San Diego Mediation Center 
625 Broadway, #1221 
San Diego, CA 92101 
Phone: (619) 238-2400 
Fax: (619) 238-8041 
Executive Director: Barbara Filner

Community Board Program 
1540 Market Street, #490 
San Francisco, CA 94102 
Phone: (415) 552-1250 
Fax: (415) 626-0595 
Executive Director: Terry Amsler

Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center 
520 South El Camino Real, #640 
San Mateo, CA 94402 
Phone: (415) 373-3490 
Fax: (415) 343-3495 
Executive Director: Patricia A. Brown

Community Mediation, Inc. 
134 Grand Avenue 
New Haven, CT 06513 
Phone: (203) 782-3500 
Fax: (203) 782-3503 
Executive Director: Charles A. Pillsbury

Center for Dispute Settlement 
1666 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 500 
Washington, DC 20009 
Phone: (202) 265-9572 
Fax: (202) 328-9162 
Executive Director: Linda R. Singer

Justice Center of Atlanta 
976 Edgewood Avenue NE 
Atlanta, GA 30307 
Phone: (404) 523-8236 
Fax: (404) 523-3936 
Executive Director: Randall F. Dobbs 

Neighborhood Justice Center of Honolulu, Inc. 
200 North Vineyard Boulevard, Suite 320 
Honolulu, HI 96817 
Phone: (808) 521-6767 
Fax: (808) 538-1454 
Executive Director: Benjamin L. Carroll III

Cambridge Dispute Settlement Center, Inc. 
872 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 2-9 
Cambridge, MA 02139 
Phone: (617) 876-5376 
Fax: (617) 876-6663 
Executive Director: Gail S. Packer

Neighborhood Reconciliation Center 
17321 Telegraph Street, Suite 308 
Detroit, MI 48219-3143 
Phone: (313) 592-1900 
Fax: (313) 592-1919 
Executive Director: Sharon S. Miller

Dispute Resolution Center 
265 Oneida Street 
St. Paul, MN 55102 
Phone: (612) 292-7791 
Executive Director: Tim Hedeen

Clark County Social Service Neighborhood Justice
Center 
1600 Pinto Lane 
Las Vegas, NV 89106 
Phone: (702) 455-5722 
Fax: (702) 455-5950 
Director: Verlia G. David

Community Justice Institute 
1201 Bacharach Boulevard 
Atlantic City, NJ 08401 
Phone: (609) 345-7267 
Fax: (609) 343-2238 
Executive Director: John White, Ph.D.

New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution 
800 Park Avenue, SW 
Albuquerque, NM 87102 
Phone: (505) 247-0571 
Fax: (505) 242-5966 
Executive Director: Melinda Smith 

The Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution 
130 Ontario Street 
Albany, NY 12206 
Phone: (518) 463-3686 
Fax: (518) 463-3680 
Executive Director: Sheri L. Dwyer

Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution 
505 Eighth Avenue, 2nd Floor 
New York, NY 10018 
Phone: (212) 643-0711 
Fax: (212) 643-0405 
President: R. David Addams

Washington Heights Inwood Coalition Mediation
Program 
652 West 187th Street 
New York, NY 10033 
Phone: (212) 781-6722 
Fax: (212) 740-8504 
Executive Director: John Swaguer

Center for Dispute Settlement, Inc. 
242 Andrews Street, Suite 400 
Rochester, NY 14604 
Phone: (716) 546-5110 
Fax: (716) 546-4391 
Executive Director: Andrew Thomas

The Mediation Center 
189 College Street 
Asheville, NC 28801-3030 
Phone: (704) 251-6089 
Fax: (704) 232-5140 
Executive Director: Barry L. Master

Orange County Dispute Settlement Center 
302 Weaver Street 
Carrboro, NC 27510 
Phone: (919) 929-8800 
Fax: (919) 942-6931 
Executive Director: Frances Henderson

Dispute Settlement Center of Durham, Inc. 
P.O. Box 2321 
Durham, NC 27702 
Phone: (919) 490-6777 
Fax: (919) 490-6463 
Executive Director: Mike Wendt 

Chatham County Dispute Settlement Center 
P.O. Box 1151 
Pittsboro, NC 27312 
Phone: (919) 542-4075 
Fax: (919) 542-6414 
Executive Director: Paula E. Browder

Cleveland Mediation Center 
3000 Bridge Avenue 
Cleveland, OH 44113 
Phone: (216) 771-7297 
Fax: (216) 771-0620 
Executive Director: Daniel P. Joyce

Pittsburgh Mediation Center 
2205 East Carson Street, 2nd Floor 
Pittsburgh, PA 15203-2107 
Phone: (412) 381-4443 
Fax: (412) 381-5334 
Executive Director: Gale McGloin

Dispute Mediation Service, Inc. 
3400 Carlisle Street, Suite 240 LB9 
Dallas, TX 75204-1261 
Phone: (214) 754-0022 
Fax: (214) 754-0378 
Executive Director: Herbert V. Cooke, Jr.

Harris County Dispute Resolution Center 
1302 Preston Street, Suite 100 
Houston, TX 77002-2013 
Phone: (713) 755-8274 
Fax: (713) 755-8885 
Executive Director: Gretchen Gemeinhardt

Northern Virginia Mediation Service 
4103 Chain Bridge Road, Suite 205 
Fairfax, VA 22030 
Phone: (703) 993-3656 
Fax: (703) 934-5142 
Executive Director: Robert Scott

King County Dispute Resolution Center 
P.O. Box 21148 
Seattle, WA 98111 
Phone: (206) 443-9603 
Fax: (206) 443-9737 
Executive Director: James L. Metz

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Appendix C 

Research Questions Requiring Attention

Many research questions need to be addressed in
greater detail to enhance our understanding of
community mediation centers and dispute resolution
in general. Some research questions deal with
operational issues of programs including:

o the influence of public versus private
sponsorship on perceptions of neutrality of the
dispute processing project, on the degree of
stigmatization of clients, and on the differential
willingness of community members to participate in
project development and functioning;

o the influence of case criteria policies upon the
public's perception of programs;

o mechanisms for structuring incentives to
encourage police officers to make referrals to
community mediation programs, such as by providing
of the equivalent of "collar credit" for mediation
referrals;

o the causes of case attrition from initial
referral to appearance at hearings;

o the influence of the use of public agency
stationery and threats of prosecution upon rates of
appearance of respondents;

o the degree to which strong threats of possible
criminal court action result in disputants
perceiving their mediated case
resolutions to be as enforceable as arbitrated
resolutions with civil remedies;

o the relative merits of conciliation, mediation,
arbitration, and combinations of these techniques
in resolving disputes;

o the relative merits of various hearing
procedures, such as written versus oral
resolutions, single versus multiple mediators, long
versus short hearings, and so forth, on dispute
resolution; and

o The relative merits of variations in types of
mediation staff-including trained citizens, lawyers, 
and professional mediators-in resolving cases. In
addition, data on citizen perceptions of the 
adequacy of each type of mediator would be valuable.

o The appropriateness of mediation in certain types
of disputes.

o The impact of attorneys in the process; and
whether their use in per se disputes should be
encouraged or not. 

Larger-scale, more basic research questions that
might be usefully explored with substantial
research programs include:

o the current availability of dispute resolution
mechanisms in communities, and differences in their
availability as a function of community size,
demographic characteristics, and so on;

o an analysis of trends in the development of
nonadjudicatory remedies to problems and the
apparent causes for these trends;

o additional cross-cultural research on the
varieties of dispute-processing mechanisms;

o variations in individual definitions of
"communities" and the degree to which individuals
are interested in having their problems solved
within the context of these perceived communities;

o the causes for individual differences in
readiness to complain about problems, and the
sociological and psychological consequences of 
dispute avoidance;

o institutional and organizational barriers to the
development of alternative dispute-processing
mechanisms, the reasons for these barriers, and
possible responses to the problem; and

o differences in the public's perception of the
civil and criminal justice systems and the impact
of these perceptions upon readiness to employ
specific forms of alternative mechanisms for
dispute resolution.