Resolving Civilian-Police Complaints in New York City: Reflections on Mediation in the Real World

The Civilian Complaint Review Board mediation program associated with the New York City Police Department appears to be an attractive alternative to the investigative process offered to complainants, offering the possibility of a higher level of satisfaction for both the civilian and the police officer. According to the scheme devised by the agency and the NYPD, cases that meet mediation guidelines should move smoothly from investigations through the approval process, coming to a scheduled mediation in a timely manner. Complaints containing some factor making them inappropriate for mediation should be able to be identified during that approval process, thus ensuring that the cases that actually make it to the mediation table have a good chance of resolving successfully. In reality, the mediation process does have some features that work extremely well, but has other components that do not. And, the expectations of the entities with a stake in the mediation process have the abilities to enhance or weaken the program. Like a chemical reaction in equilibrium, the degree to which the mediation process appears to be working well or poorly is influenced by any changes that occur to the reactants, the parties, management, and staff of the CCRB, and the board itself - and the environment where it takes place

Elder Mediation in Theory and Practice: Study Results from a National Caregiver Mediation Demonstration Project

Mediation is a process through which a third party facilitates discussion among disputing parties to help them identify interests and ideally reach an amicable solution. Elder mediation is a growing subspecialty to address conflicts involving older adults, primarily involving caregiving or finances. Mediation is theorized to empower participants but critics argue that it can exacerbate power imbalances among parties and coerce consensus. These contested claims are examined through study of a national caregiver mediation demonstration project. Study implications underscore the importance of gerontological social work expertise to ensure the empowerment of vulnerable older adults in mediation sessions

Identifying some obstacles from intuition to a successful mediation process

Intuition and common beliefs can sometimes misguide the mediator and be obstacles to the success of mediation, when they are linked to behaviors which likely induce negative consequences in the process. Following four different stages of a mediation session, this paper names a series of such obstacles and explores their underlying intuitions, as well as their subsequent usual behavior and its rather negative effects. Each time, alternative strategies that increase expectations of success are suggested, with their expected outcome. This paper combines a descriptive approach of obstacles which increase the chance of a negative process and mediation failure, with a prescriptive approach of alternative behaviors that increase the chance of a positive process and mediation success.Mediation; Success; Failure; Obstacles; Process; Intuition; Mediator’s Behavior; Descriptive Approach; Prescriptive Approach

Mediation, Walrasian Tatonement, and Negotiations as an Exchange Economy

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures, such as mediation and arbitration, are becoming increasingly used to help resolve disputes in a variety of arenas. Among ADR procedures, mediation is the most utilized yet least analyzed procedure. This article examines negotiations and dispute resolution using the tools of general equilibrium theory. Specifically, mediators function as the Walrasian auctioneers of exchange theory by altering trade-off rates among bargaining issues. In this way, mediators facilitate a process leading towards voluntary settlement. This idea of Walrasian mediation is supported by the literature on mediation and mediator techniques, and so this insight opens up mediation to much more rigorous economic analysis. Among the implications of this approach are: 1) successful mediation leads to Pareto efficient settlements; 2) non-neutral mediators—those with a stake in the outcome—can guide negotiators towards preferred outcomes by introducing resources into mediation; 3) mediation Pareto dominates arbitration for resolving disputes.

Pre-litigation Mediation as a Privacy Policy: Exploring the Interaction of Economics and Privacy

Pre-litigation mediation is a perfect example of the economic trade-offs that exist in privacy policy. In pre-litigation mediation, costs and confidentiality work independently. However, there is a precarious balance that exists where, if either confidentiality or cost became less effective the entire mediation process might be damaged.mediation; confidentiality, privacy, prelitigation; prelitigation mediation

Mediation, Self-Represented Parties, and Access to Justice: Getting There from Here

Mediation is enthusiastically promoted as a vehicle for providing access to justice. This is as true in developing countries as it is in the United States. For individuals, mediation promises autonomy, self-determination and empowerment; for courts, there is the lure of procedural and administrative reforms—reduced dockets and greater efficiencies. Unburdened with formal discovery, evidentiary and procedural rules, pleadings, and motions, mediation is thought to generate access to justice at a faster pace than litigation. Commentators sing its praises while bemoaning its underutilization. I argue that claims about mediation’s ability to provide access to justice should be more modest because mediation falls short on its original promise of being a voluntary process based on party self-determination. In what I label a “withering away of consent,” courts and legislatures have pushed hard to sell mediation as an access to justice opportunity, often without regard for the consensual nature of the process. Too often, this hard sell has negative consequences for individuals with disadvantaged economic status who navigate the legal system on their own. These are the self-represented parties who seek access to justice in the formal judicial system but then find themselves in mediation, a different, informal system than what has been institutionalized in the courts. The extent to which they receive justice from either system is unclear

'Becoming experts': learning through mediation

Purpose – This study is largely founded on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, Feuerstein’s theory of Mediated Learning Experience and Lave and Wenger’s ‘community of practice’, which concerned building a community of learners that places mediation as central in learning and teaching. While the overall study involved Malaysian Year One English and Mathematics classrooms, this article focuses only on the latter. Two research questions were posed: 1) How does the teacher/peers mediate learning? 2) How does mediation influence the individual’s identity? Method – This qualitative study was conducted within a period of three months. Data collection included intense classroom observations, interviews, classroom discourse and dialogic discussions with teachers and pupils. Microgenetic analyses of transcripts were made to show moment-to moment changes observed.Findings – Four types of mediation emerged from the data : Environmental mediation, cognitive mediation, affective mediation and metacognitive mediation (i.e., an ECAM model for mediation).Findings suggest that mediation enabled the Mathematics teacher to change, to take ownership and to sustain her new pedagogical approaches within the classroom. This re-focusing benefited her pupils, and dramatically changed a particular less able pupil from one who was initially ‘lost in his world,’ into one who was able to engage in the learning process, take ownership of his own learning, as well as mediate other pupils’ learning. Value – Hence it is argued that the ECAM model for mediation provided opportunities for this teacher and her pupil to expand their capacity to learn and develop their identities as individuals capable of learning and becoming ‘experts’

A qualitative study into parental mediation of adolescents' internet use

The vast majority of studies on parental mediation are quantitative by nature, which leads to a lack of in-depth understanding of how parents define and perform their role as socializing agents in this area. The present study offers new insights into how parental mediation is implemented on a daily basis with regard to adolescents' internet use. Therefore, six focus group interviews with parents of children aged 13 to 17 were performed (in total, 34 participants). Concretely, the study investigated (i) how parents perceive their adolescents' internet use, (ii) how parents define their own role as socializing agents, and (iii) how parents perform internet mediation on a daily basis. The results show that parental mediation is best conceived as a dynamic process that stems from the daily interactions between parents and their adolescent children, rather than as a preconceived set of rules and strategies that are implemented. Open communication and making a connection with the adolescent in terms of his or her internet use are parents' preferred strategies for performing parental mediation. The results have implications in terms of parental mediation research as well as in terms of the support directed at parents of adolescent children.status: publishe

Mediation of semantic web services in IRS-III

Business applications composed of heterogeneous distributed components or Web services need mediation to resolve data and process mismatches at runtime. This paper describes mediation in IRS-III, a framework and platform for developing WSMO-based Semantic Web Services. We present our approach to mediation within Semantic Web Services and highlight the role of WSMO mediator types when solving mismatches at the semantic level between a service requester and a service provider. We describe the components of our mediation framework and how it can handle data, goal and process mediation during the activities of selection, composition and invocation of Semantic Web Services