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How to evaluate mediation activities

The evaluation of mediation programmes is not always easy as their results often depend on the expected final purpose. Such purpose, in fact, can be the interest of the victim, that is to say the satisfaction of his/her needs, or the re-socialization of the offender, or the need to lower recidivism rates or again to reduce penal charges.

Generally speaking, mediation programmes have so far been evaluated according to the following criteria (see Gatti & Marugo's contribution to Ponti G., Tutela della vittima e mediazione penale, Milano, 1994):

a) the parties' voluntary participation in mediation;

b) the possibility to reach an agreement;

c) the parties' levels of satisfaction;

d) the offender's behaviour after mediation (fulfilment of the agreement and recidivism);

e) the consequences on the formal justice system (usually the reduction in incarceration rates).

a) As regards the victims' participation, it appears that most victims accept to enter the proposed programme. Such rates amount to about 90% in Austria, 60% in England and between 80% and 90% in Germany, between 50% and 80% in France and between 50% and 60% in Northern America.

We see how the rates of victims' participation can vary considerably, not only comparing data from programmes carried out in different countries, but also from different programmes in the same country: this disparity is probably caused by the different methods used in different studies and by the wide range of programmes and samples taken into account. The success of a programme is often due to its nature and the circumstance of the offence and to some personal characteristics of victim and offender.

The rates of offenders' participation in mediation are also quite high, although the voluntariness of their participation is disputed: some studies show in fact that offender do not perceive their participation as free and some authors (Umbreit and Coates) remark that mediation is often considered as the only alternative to detention and therefore it is quite an imposition, rather than a choice. However, we wish to point out that the rates of actually mediated cases can be influenced by the way cases are assigned to the existing programmes. We note in fact that such rates decreased considerably in the past years, being around 37% (Umbreit, Victim Meets Offender, Criminal Justice Press; Monsey, NY 1994). The quite low ratio between actually mediated cases and the number of assigned cases should not deceive, because a change occurred in assignment procedures; in particular, we note that the practice to refer only strictly selected cases to mediation according to the possibility of success has been abandoned in the past years. Moreover, programmes are progressively removing restrictive admission requirements, thus increasing their implementation area. This caused an increase in the number of programme-assigned cases with the consequence that the absolute number of mediations increased but their value compared to programme-assigned cases decreased.

b) As to the second evaluation criterion, i.e. the opportunity to reach an agreement between the parties, success rates in the various studies are very high: an average of 95% of mediations end positively, i.e. with an agreement (Umbreit, 1994).

c) By evaluating programmes according to the degree of satisfaction of victims and offenders we also obtain very high rates

Data show a high level of satisfaction of mediation participants. Victims' motivations are quite various: many find that talking directly with the offender helped them facing their fear of crime and overcome the impact of the offence they suffered; others see advantages in the informality and rapidity of the mediation process as well as in receiving damage compensation and at the same time in sparing the offender a period of detention, which is mostly perceived as useless; many victims also believe that the active role played by offenders during mediation facilitates their social reintegration. Besides all this, most victims feel that mediation allowed them to find a more central position in conflict resolution than court proceedings. Damage compensation, which is often one of the main reasons for the victim to accept mediation, is not the main reason for the victim to express a positive opinion on mediation (Umbreit, 1994).

Offenders' satisfaction rates are even higher than the victims' rates. Here too motivations are quite various: many offenders who enter mediation not completely voluntarily are quite sceptical at the beginning about the possibility to reach an agreement with the victim; they fear their potential inferior position in mediation, the idea of having to face the victim's hatred directly, the embarrassment in explaining the event and having to apologize and, last but not least, the idea that the mediator will only act in favour of the victim. Once the mediation session is over, though, many state that expressing emotions and getting to know the victim was a positive experience; that the restitution agreement was fair compared to the damage caused and that they will do their best to honour it; moreover, most of them are glad that the victim gave them the opportunity to avoid detention and repair their mistake. The main motivation appears to be the opportunity to demonstrate to be just a normal person and not a dangerous criminal (Umbreit, 1994). Moreover, both victims and offenders often perceive mediation and the final agreement as fair.

d) And now we come to the fourth criterion, i.e. the offender's behaviour following mediation. As to the fulfilment of the agreement reached during mediation, several studies report that most such agreements (about 80%) are actually honoured. Different and more complex is the phenomenon of recidivism, as the results of studies vary substantially; some authors see a remarkable divergence in recidivism rates between mediation admitted subjects (0,64 offences per offender per year) and subjects detained or on probation (0,80 offences per offender per year). By comparing recidivism in offenders who entered mediation and the relevant control group who went through traditional court proceedings, Umbreit (1994) concludes that there is a small and statistically meaningless difference in the recidivism rates of the two groups: in particular, those who go through mediation have lower recidivism rates and their further offences are less serious than those committed before referral to mediation, the opposite occurs for those who went through traditional court proceedings. It appears quite simplistic that mere mediation could be such an efficient response to recidivism: we cannot expect that a series of meetings for a total of 6-10 hours can significantly influence the offenders' future criminal behaviour or solve their social or family problems. By assessing mediation in terms of recidivism we can only express a positive opinion if recidivism rates do no increase after mediation; this seems to be the result of these studies as they do not show any increase in recidivism rates. Some authors emphasize that success or failure of mediation programmes cannot be established only by taking into account recidivism rates (as mediation does not belong to Crime Control Schemes), however this issue ought not be underestimated, especially by those who are convinced that mediation programmes should be extended to more serious offenders.

e) The results of studies examining the fifth variable, i.e. the impact of mediation on the formal justice system, are quite univocal; mediation appears in fact to have scarce influence both on incarceration rates and justice costs. However, it must be noted that being this aim in favour of the formal justice system, it cannot be taken into account when determining the success of a mediation programme; it could be, if ever, a "limiting factor", i.e. should the main purposes of mediation fail, an increase in incarceration rates and justice costs would justify giving up mediation programmes. The impact of mediation on the costs of justice is also strictly connected with the size of court caseload that is assigned to mediation programmes.

Several studies analyzed the impact of mediation on public opinion. Results show that mediation is met with some favour and victims generally prefer non afflictive forms of conflict resolution; the seriousness or type of crimes do seldom play an important role in determining their opinion.

An overview of the empirical research activities on penal mediation currently implemented in our country shows that the most complete data are those collected for the survey on juvenile penal mediation activities (Rilevazione sulle attività di mediazione penale minorile) by the Department for Juvenile Justice - General Directorate for Juvenile Justice Actions and the Enforcement of Judicial Provisions (2nd and 3rd Divisions) which was planned as monitoring activity. As far as we know, no evaluation research has been published on mediation activity or restorative justice in Italy.