Community Mediation in Dorchester, Massachusetts

• NCJ Number: 71092
• Author(s): W L F Felstiner; L A Williams
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 233 pages
• Grant Number(s): 78-NI-AX-0049
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Justice (NIJ); US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Corporate Author: University of Southern California
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This report describes the mediation component of the Dorchester Urban Court (Massachusetts) and analyzes the mediation process, mediation training, referral sources, costs, and caseload problems.

Abstract

Data for the report came from interviews, analysis of the first 500 project files, and observation of 34 mediation sessions. Researchers also conducted surveys of disputants and mediators. The project substituted lay mediation for criminal prosecution in cases where the victim and defendant were not strangers. Most of the referred cases came from the clerk or a judge of the local district court, and most cases involved assaults or threats between intimates. Weapons of some sort were used two-thirds of the time. Mediation hearings were held in two-thirds of the cases referred to the project, and agreements were reached in 90 percent of the cases. The PROJECT'S long-term followup confirmed that improved relations between parties followed successful mediation. The most common agreement failure concerned the payment of money, and the most common response of an agreement breakdown was to do nothing. Low caseloads were a major project problem; caseloads averaged only 18 per month from 1976-77. Mediation costs in 1976-77 totaled about three times the court costs saved by mediation; however, this occurrence is attributed to mediation as practiced in Dorchester, rather than mediation as a process. The report also concludes that, because mediators are strangers and because institutionalized mediation is unfamiliar, this kind of mediation in the short term is likely to play only a small role at the margin of dispute processing behavior. Mediator training is seen as the key to the content of mediation hearings. In addition, future high-volume mediation projects are seen as having important links to the criminal justice system. On a cost-benefit basis, mediations per case costs are probably greater than lower criminal court processing in Dorchester, but benefits to the disputants and to the community are almost surely greater. The report contains 55 tables, 1 figure, footnotes, references, and 5 appendixes of illustrative cases, case dispositions, study instruments, and related materials. (Author abstract modified)