Wipf & Stock Publishers have just republished "The Bethlehem Pennsylvania Police Family Group Conferencing Project" by IIRP founding professor Paul McCold, now adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University School of Criminology, and IIRP director of technology Benjamin Wachtel. Reissued with the title Restorative Policing Experiment, the volume takes its place Wipf & Stock's new Restorative Justice Classics series. The book announcement says:
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.
Other titles in the series include:
Justice That Heals by Arthur Paul Boers
- Restorative Justice and Practices in New Zealand
- Sexual Offending and Restoration by Mark Yantzi
- Family, Victims and Culture by Gabrielle M. Maxwell, Allison Morris
- Limits to Pain by Nils Christie
- Justice as Sanctuary by Herman Bianchi
For more information and to order the book online from the publisher at a discounted web price click here.
