Mediation volunteers needed

In times of neighbor-to-neighbor dispute or community member conflict the human tendency sometimes is to draw a line in the sand that neither person can cross.\nHelping to bridge that interpersonal gap is the Bloomington-based Community Justice and Mediation Center, which promotes a civil and just community through mediation, education and restorative justice.\n"We would meet with both parties separately to determine the issues involved and to determine if mediation makes sense," said Amy Dowell, executive director of CJMC, 120 W. Seventh St, Suite 310. "We then sit down for a face-to-face mediation session and mediators would help discuss the situation and hopefully come up with some kind of agreement. We get a wide range of cases."\nDisputes can be mediated between neighbors, landlords and tenants, merchants and customers, professionals and clients, adults and youth, and any other who wish to resolve conflict voluntarily and foster constructive relationships, according to a CJMC pamphlet. \nCJMC offers educational workshops and training to individuals and organizations about managing conflict; they facilitate the group decision-making process for businesses and organizations facing change, conflict or policy issues; they help courts, probation and the prosecutor's office hold offenders directly accountable to the people they harmed; they provide telephone support for individuals involved in a dispute and assist the caller about possible peaceful choices for how to proceed; they offer offense-specific programs that help participants identify the feelings, thoughts and actions which let them to commit a crime and how to make better choices in the future; they help youths and adults understand the broader effects of criminal behavior on friends, family, businesses and the community as a whole; and they visit inmates, keep record of jail conditions and work to maximize the rehabilitative focus of the local justice system among other community functions.\nDowell said the most difficult challenge the CJMC faces is getting both parties to agree to mediation, and then getting both parties to the negotiating table. She said some community members reject the notion of mediation outright, while others think mediation will not work because the two parties involved are too far from the middle. \n"We take each case individually. When we talk to the first person we try to get a feel for what's going on and figure out what has worked and what hasn't," Dowell said. "We don't try to solve the situation immediately. We send a letter and follow up with a phone call to try to get the people involved together."\nMediation can work whenever the parties are willing and able to negotiate freely, according to a CJMC pamphlet. But mediation is often not possible if there is a fear of imminent violence or an extensive history of abuse; a party is under constraints or instructions which prevents him or her from coming to an agreement; a party lacks the power or ability to negotiate on his or her own behalf; ongoing issues that require significant counseling or treatment; or there is a significant public interest in the outcome of the dispute.\nDowell said about half of the cases reported to her office are mediated -- that is both parties agree to sit down face-to-face at the table. Of those cases that are mediated, she said most are successful in the sense an agreement is reached or a conclusion about how best to proceed is decided.\n"It is very difficult to mediate, but avoiding a conflict really doesn't make it go away. The dispute will come back because we live with people, we're in relationships with people and we're in a community with people," Dowell said. "If it's a situation where you need an ongoing relationship with somebody -- whether business or personal -- try mediation. Even if it doesn't work out, you get a better understanding of what went wrong. Trying mediation isn't going to hurt your chances in the future; it can only help them."\nShe said people can get a lot of benefits from meeting the person who has offended them, and expressing how that incident impacted them.\n"A person can request certain things from the other person like 'I want you to write a paper about this' or 'volunteer at Middle Way House so you can learn more about how violence traumatizes someone,'" Dowell said. "One classic situation is a group of kids who damages some neighbors' property -- they think they were only having fun, but when they sit down with those people they realize there were many different impacts on those homeowners. So they pay money for the damage and maybe they do a presentation to their peers so they don't make the same mistake."\nCJMC also operates the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program that can serve as a diversion from prosecution, a condition of informal adjustment or pretrial agreement, a part of a sentence or after-sentencing program at the request of the victim or offender, according to a CJMC pamphlet. \nCJMC is seeking applications for Victim Offender Conferencing training through the Friday, in which community members will focus on the theory and practice of restorative justice: practice and research; screening and referring cases; victim and offender issues; how mediation works and its itsrole of the mediator and communication skills and techniques. Community members wishing to volunteer can contact the CJMC office for more information including fees, as training runs July 27 through July 30. \nDowell said a good mediator is a good listener, someone who has experience working among diverse populations and a person with a compassionate attitude.\n"I don't think we as Americans and citizens of the world realize the impact of our behavior on other people," she said. "Even if it's not intentional, if somebody is going through something, our behavior can have much more impact then we think, and we wouldn't know that until we sit down and talk with them that what we did was wrong. We could then discuss ways to fix the situation."\nFor mediation services contact 812-336-8677 or visit www.bloomington.in.us/~mediate for more information.