NCJ Number
181444
Journal
European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Dated: 1999 Pages: 483-507
Date Published
1999
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This article evaluates experiments with community mediation in the Netherlands.
Abstract
Many neighborhoods in the Netherlands have reached the stage of colliding subcultures and interpersonal conflict. In some places, this social-cultural diversity leads to fear, uncertainty and irritation. Multi-ethnic community boards are starting to function as mediatory panels for settling disputes between neighbors and neighborhood residents. This article claims that community mediation--a form of alternative dispute resolution designed to resolve interpersonal conflict in the neighborhood--is both an attempt to rejuvenate the idea of community and a new way to settle differences and interpersonal conflicts between neighbors in the Netherlands. It suggests that the neighborhood may be a level too high for social intervention, and that instead the focus should be on the house, the block or, at most, the street. A need orientation to solving conflicts can be an important starting point in a process of institutional analysis. From a need-oriented model, it is important that community mediation can develop in an inductive way, bottom-up, pre-institutional, by people defining their own problems and by mediators accepting and starting from the definition of the situation made by the complainant and the respondent. Notes, tables, references