NCJ Number
83475
Date Published
1982
Length
19 pages
Annotation
The experimental neighborhood justice centers in Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles fulfilled their primary goals of providing relatively inexpensive, expeditious, and fair resolution of disputes while enhancing the quality of justice delivered to the community.
Abstract
Because the three centers were each provided with guidelines developed by Federal agencies, they had certain characteristics in common, notably the ways in which they were organized and staffed and the methods by which they resolved disputes. Each center recruited community representatives as mediators. In the mediating process, the mediator gathered facts and reviewed issues in an effort to move the parties toward an agreement. In a final joint session, if some resolution was reached, a written agreement was signed by the parties. During the 2-year study, evidence showed that mediation is an effective and satisfactory method for resolving many types of minor disputes. Almost 4,000 varied cases from diverse sources were handled effectively, and successful resolutions were reached in nearly half of them. Followup interviews 6 months later indicated that a substantial majority of disputants were satisfied with the center alternative and were holding to the terms of their agreements. Further, mediation was found to be more satisfactory to disputants and at least as effective in resolving disputes in the long term as the courts and that the centers can resolve disputes much faster and at less cost than courts. Overall, this type of informal process has the potential for being an effective alternative to the courts and of relieving the court of some of its caseload as the number of cases referred and processed by the centers increases. Tabular data from the study are provided.