Court ADR News

Cuyahoga County to Use Ohio Government Conflict Resolution Services

A new mediation program created by the Ohio Supreme Court will be used in a dispute over control of the Cuyahoga County Clerk of Courts. Tensions have simmered between the county administration and the courts over control of the Clerk of Courts office. Government Conflict Resolution Services, offered by the Supreme Court of Ohio Dispute Resolution Section, was created to help local government branches resolve their differences through mediation.

When One Party Is Late, Illinois Court Arbitrators May Let Other Party Leave

An Illinois appellate court decided that a trial court could bar a plaintiff from rejecting a nonbinding arbitration ruling for the defendant. In Payton-White v. Weir, a personal injury case sent to mandatory arbitration, the court arbitrators decided against the plaintiff on grounds of bad faith for nonappearance, exactly fifteen minutes after the arbitration was scheduled to begin. The plaintiff arrived three minutes after the ruling, but the defendant had already left. The plaintiff argued that she was not in bad faith because her lateness was beyond her control due to her injuries, and that the arbitrators incorrectly claimed they had no discretion to keep the defendant beyond the grace period. In previous cases, arbitrators were found to be in error when late parties arrived before judgment was entered and defendants had left, but were found in bad faith. In this case, because judgment had been entered the arbitrator was not in error to dismiss the defendant.

Mediation Council of Illinois to Hold Annual Conference

The Mediation Council of Illinois is having their annual conference on Friday, May 9, from 8:45 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois. The all-day conference discusses "Current Issues in Mediation" including domestic violence screening, recent appellate court decisions and family circles.

New Research

Restorative Justice Conferences Provide Eight Times More Benefits Than Costs

A new study from Britain has some interesting findings regarding the effectiveness of restorative justice programs. The study, Restorative Justice Conferencing (RJC) Using Face-to-Face Meetings of Offenders and Victims: Effects on Offender Recidivism and Victim Satisfaction. A Systematic Review, by Heather Strang et al, found a modest decrease in recidivism across ten programs. In addition, victim impacts were uniformly positive. They also found that the programs were highly cost-effective, with eight times the benefit due to crimes avoided than costs of the program.

Strang and her team conducted a meta-analysis of seven programs in the UK, two in Australia and one in Indiana to determine the effect of RJC on recidivism and victim satisfaction. Meta-analysis combines the data from multiple studies in order to get a better picture of the effectiveness of an intervention like RJC. In this case, the studies all used random or quasi-random assignment, were conducted after 1994, and had a combined total of 1,879 offenders and 734 victims.

When combined, the studies showed a moderately positive effect on repeat offending over a two-year follow-up period, an effect that was statistically significant. Interestingly, the effect was 28% larger for violent crimes than for property crimes. It was also larger for adults than for juveniles. These findings indicate that RJC is most effective for violent crimes and for adults. Strang and her team also looked at the effect of diverting cases from conventional justice rather than having RJC simply supplement the conventional track. Unfortunately, the data was too uncertain for them to draw clear conclusions on this topic.

The meta-analysis also looked at the following impacts of RJC on victims: material restoration, emotional restoration, satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the process, desire for revenge and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Only two studies looked at material restoration, finding that 16% of victims who participated in RJC received monetary compensation, compared to 12% of those who did not participate. Emotional restoration was measured in terms of feelings of safety. Victims participating in RJC were significantly less likely to feel that they would be victimized by the offender again. The greatest differences were among those who were victims of violent crime. Five times fewer violent crime victims who participated in RJC felt that way compared to those who went through court. Victims were also much more likely to report having received a sincere apology from the offender.

In an unsurprising finding, victims who participated in RJC were more likely to be satisfied (70% v 42% in Australia, 72% v 60% in the UK and 92% v 68% in the US) and less likely to be dissatisfied with their experience than those who did not. Further, victims who went through RJC were less likely to want to harm the offender than those whose cases went to court. For example, in Australia, 45% of victims of violent crimes who were assigned to court wanted revenge, as compared to 9% of those who were assigned to RJC. Victims who participated in RJCs also were less likely to have post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Cost-effectiveness was evaluated in the seven UK programs by giving varying weight to the different crimes (rape, burglary, etc.) for which offenders were convicted during the follow-up period. This was done by using government calculations for costs of particular types of crimes. Strang et al found that the decrease in recidivism across the seven programs provided eight times the savings due to crimes prevented than costs incurred by the seven programs.

From Just Court ADR Blog

"Hot-Tubbing" and ADR?

"Did you know there is an ADR process called "hot-tubbing?" This was news to me when I heard it mentioned last week at the Court ADR Symposium (which occurs every year on the day before the ABA Dispute Resolution Section Conference). As I understand it, the process is used sometimes in arbitration when there are conflicting expert opinions." Read the rest of this post by Susan Yates >>

RSI to Present at 16th Annual ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Conference

"Next week, RSI Executive Director Susan Yates will give two presentations during the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution Conference." Read the rest of this post by Mary Novak >>

Remembering Dick Salem

"The field of Alternative Dispute Resolution lost one of our founders this weekend when Dick Salem died. Dick's core values led him to work in dispute resolution before it was a field." Read the rest of this post by Susan Yates >>

Illinois Foreclosure Mediation Updates

"In the summer of 2013, RSI received a grant from the Illinois Attorney General to incubate foreclosure mediation programs throughout the state of Illinois. Through the grant, RSI is directly responsible for helping to develop and staff programs in Lake, Kane and Winnebago counties. We have also been tasked with training foreclosure mediators and developing a cloud-based online case management, monitoring and evaluation system for all foreclosure mediation incubation programs throughout Illinois." Read the rest of this post by Shawn Davis >>