Conflict Resolution Education - National Criminal Justice Reference ...

wards can avoid consequences that could lengthen
their stay at the facility. The program has a significant
impact on conflict managers, helping them to
increase their self-esteem, learn to resolve conflicts
peacefully, and improve academic achievement.
Working with facilities in three Bay Area counties
of California, the Community Board conducted extensive
staff development work that included building
and training a Site Leadership Team, developing
online counselors as conflict manager trainers, and
developing a program plan based on the facilities’
needs and staff input. Within a period of 9 months
to a year, the Community Board staff trained at least
3 groups of 15 young men as conflict managers at
each facility, leaving each with a solid, well-prepared
team of trainers to continue periodic training of new
conflict managers.
Learning mediation has helped me to realize
that there are other methods of solving your
problems other than violence. It has also
helped me to deal with different types of
people.
16-year-old resident,
Youth Diagnostic and Development Center
After 3 years, Conflict Manager programs in juvenile
facilities are ongoing, and trained youth are helping to
resolve disputes for their peers every day. Peer mediation
programs have reduced the number and seriousness
of conflicts and rule infractions and have limited
staff time spent on discipline.
A survey completed at the end of their training
asked conflict managers where they thought they
might be able to use their new skills other than participating
in the Conflict Manager program. Nearly
every ward wrote that the skills would be useful
in other settings—with family, at a job, or with
neighborhood friends. At Holden Ranch, a conflict
manager who graduated from the facility called a
counselor several months later to say that conflict
50
resolution skills had helped him change his difficult
relationship with his mother.
Studies of recidivism have found that wards are less
likely to return to the correctional system if they have
steady employment. Other studies show that graduates
of juvenile facilities often lose jobs not because they
lack technical skills, but because they are unable to resolve
problems with co-workers, supervisors, or employers.
Thus, it is likely that conflict managers will
stay out of the correctional system after they leave the
facility. This may be the most important long-term
impact of the conflict manager training program.
Alternative Schools
Students in most alternative schools do not differ
substantially from students in other schools when it
comes to conflict and do not need to be treated differently
when developing and implementing a conflict
resolution program. Some alternative schools enroll
youth with behavioral/emotional disorders, including
students who have dropped out or are at risk of dropping
out. Many of these youth are involved in the
court system and may be in an alternative school because
of court dictates. Some are teen parents; some
are homeless; others are involved in substance abuse.
Although many of these students are intellectually
capable, they have often failed academically.
These alternative schools offer a place for students
who have demonstrated, in one or many ways,
that their behavior is unacceptable in a regular
school. Often the participants in these alternative
schools have demonstrated the potential for selfdestructive,
antisocial, or violent behavior. Most
students placed in such alternative schools need
conflict resolution education because they have
experienced numerous conflicts involving other
youth, school staff members, and school expectations
or rules. They are often in these alternative
schools because they escalated rather than deescalated
a dispute. These students are clearly prime
candidates for conflict resolution education. The
following section describes a conflict resolution
program in an alternative school in New York.