Mediation in black and white: Mediation center‐police partnerships—a dignified police response

Abstract

AbstractThis article addresses how mediation center‐police partnerships, in which police are mere referral agents for mediation centers, perpetuate superficial responses to police calls‐for‐service, social inequality, social subordination, and the already had police‐people of color relationship. I take an alternative position, which calls for mediation centers not to discourage police officers from doing what they have been doing all along (although selectively): mediating. In this regard, I show how partnerships that discourage police officers from transferring power in interpersonal disputes perpetuate the fundamental social problem of racially discriminatory policing. Specifically, the problem is that of mediation being performed less frequently in communities of color than in other communities. A mediation center‐police partnership that looks to many mediation professionals like a healthy, traditional institutional arrangement could justifiably be perceived by people of color as contributing to social injustice.