Family Group Conferencing Comes to the U.S.: A Comparison with Victim‐Offender Mediation

Abstract

A boy hesitantly appears in the doorway to a meeting room. A large man wearing a name tag greets him thoughtfully and points out where he should sit in the horseshoe of chairs in the room. The boy crosses the room, picks his name tag up off the chair, puts it on crookedly, and sits down. On his face apprehension alternates with bravado. As his mother and sister, done with hanging their coats, enter the room the boy begins to fidget quietly. The large man greets them and points out their places in the horseshoe of chairs; they find their name tags on their chairs and sit down on either side of the boy. Other people that the boy and his family are close to appear in the doorway, are greeted, and move to their seats farther down the arch of the horseshoe: his grandfather and cousin, his basketball coach, his school social worker, an elderly neighbor, and a member of his mother's church. Their faces, and those of his mother and sister, betray various emotions; grim calm, hopefulness, solemnity, foreboding, sadness, and quiet interest. When they are seated, the chairs on one side of the horseshoe arch are full. The investigating officer enters, and sits at the apex of the arch.When they are all seated, the large man leaves the room and comes back with a group of people who have been waiting in a nearby room. The boy's victim enters the room first; she is a small, white‐haired woman who shakes a little as she crosses the room and sits in a chair directly across the horseshoe from the boy. The boy glances quickly at her and then looks down and away to avoid her eyes. On her face, anxiety is swiftly replaced by surprise, relief, and then anger as she openly studies the boy across from her. Her daughter, a middleaged woman, sits down on one side of her, and her teenaged grandson takes his place on the other side of the victim. The older woman's minister, two elderly women neighbors, and a middle‐aged male friend find their name tags on chairs further down the horseshoe's arch. When they sit down they fill the last vacancies in the horseshoe of chairs. The large man who greeted them all takes his place on a chair at the open end of the horseshoe. He is the conference coordinator and the only one with whom every person present has spoken about this meeting. He smiles quietly, looks around the circle of faces, clears his throat, and begins the family group conference.