Restorative Policing Experiment: The Bethlehem Pennsylvania Police Family Group Conferencing Project

by Paul McCold, Benjamin Wachtel, Jarem Sawatsky (Foreword by)

Overview

The Bethlehem Police Family Group Conferencing Experiment was the first randomized trial of restorative justice in the United States. Moderately serious juvenile offenses were randomly assigned either to court or to a diversionary "restorative policing" process called family group conferencing. Police-based family group conferencing used trained police officers to facilitate a meeting attended by juvenile offenders, their victims, and their respective family and friends. This group would discuss the harm caused by the offender's actions and develop an agreement to repair the harm. The effect of the program was measured through surveys of victims, offenders, offender's parents, and police officers, and also by examining the outcomes of conferences and formal adjudication. The book contains an extended appendix that presents these outcome-based statistics for this seminal program. At a time when research for new restorative justice programs in the 1990s was just beginning to surface, this study provides a valuable picture of the successes of the family conferencing model in its early formation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781725231702
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	09/06/2012
Series:	Restorative Justice Classics Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	150
File size:	589 KB

About the Author

Paul McCold is now retired and lives in Berkeley, CA with his wife, Beth Rodman.

Ben Wachtel is director of communications and technology for the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP). He has worked with the IIRP since its inception and its sister organizations, Community Service Foundation and Buxmont Academy, since 1995. Ben
served as a researcher on the Restorative Policing Experiment, a National Institute of Justice-funded study of the Bethlehem Police Department's restorative justice conferencing program with juvenile offenders, completed in 1998.
Ben Wachtel is director of communications and technology for the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP). He has worked with the IIRP since its inception and its sister organizations, Community Service Foundation and Buxmont Academy, since 1995. Ben
served as a researcher on the Restorative Policing Experiment, a National Institute of Justice-funded study of the Bethlehem Police Department's restorative justice conferencing program with juvenile offenders, completed in 1998.
Jarem Sawatsky is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies, Canadian Mennonite University.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 1

1 Restorative Policing 7

2 The Bethlehem Experiment 15

3 Conference Observations 27

4 Police Surveys 39

5 Participant Surveys 47

Victim survey results 51

Offender survey results 58

Parent survey results 64

6 Recidivism 73

7 Systemic Responses 79

8 Comparative Analyses 89

9 Conclusions 103

Limitations of current research 110

Appendices 115

Endnotes 137