A variety of uses

• Conferencing can be employed by schools in response to truancy, disciplinary incidents, including violence, or as a prevention strategy in the form of role plays of conferences with primary and elementary school students.

• Police can use conferences as a warning or diversion from court, especially with first-time offenders.

• Courts may use conferencing as a diversion, an alternative sentencing process, or a healing event for victims and offenders after the court process is concluded.

• Juvenile and adult probation officers may respond to various probation violations with conferences.

• Correctional and treatment facilities will find that conferences resolve the underlying issues and tensions in conflicts and disciplinary actions.

• Colleges and universities can use conferences with dormitory and campus incidents and disciplinary violations.

• In workplaces conferencing addresses both wrongdoing and conflict.

Repairing the harm

A conference is a structured meeting between offenders, victims and both parties' family and friends in which they deal with the consequences of the crime and decide how best to repair the harm. Neither a counseling nor a mediation process, conferencing is a straightforward problem-solving method that demonstrates how citizens can resolve their own problems when provided with a constructive forum to do so.

Conferences provide victims and others an opportunity to confront the offender, express their feelings, ask questions and have a say in the outcome. Offenders hear firsthand how their behavior has affected people. They may begin to repair the harm by apologizing, making amends and agreeing to financial restitution or personal or community service work. Conferences hold offenders accountable while providing them an opportunity to discard the "offender" label and be reintegrated into their community, school or workplace.

A scripted process

Participation in conferences is voluntary. After it is determined that a conference is appropriate and offenders and victims have agreed to attend, the conference facilitator invites others affected by the incident--the family and friends of victims and offenders.

A Real Justice conference can be used in lieu of traditional disciplinary or justice processes, or where that is not appropriate, as a supplement to those processes.

Conference facilitators stick to a simple script and keep the conference on focus, but are not active participants. A conference is far more productive and rewarding than the current means of responding to wrongdoing.

In the conference the facilitator asks the offenders to tell what they did and what they were thinking about when they did it. The facilitator then asks victims and their family members and friends to tell about the incident from their perspective and how it affected them. The offenders' family and friends are asked to do the same.

Finally the victim is asked what he or she would like to be the outcome of the conference. The response is discussed with the offender and everyone else at the conference. When agreement is reached, a simple contract is written and signed.

Positive results

Since the first Real Justice trainings in March 1995, people have experienced positive results with conferencing. A two-year study of conferencing showed almost universal satisfaction with conferencing among victims, offenders and offenders' families; 94 percent of offenders complied with commitments they made to victims in conferences; and victims who participated in conferences were more likely to say the offender was held accountable, compared to victims whose cases went to court.