Alaska Journal of Dispute Resolution

145 Pages·2013·2.15 MB·English

Alaska Journal of
Dispute Resolution

Volume 2012 Number 1

University of Alaska Fairbanks

Volume 2012 Number 1

Alaska Journal of Dispute Resolution

In Memoriam:

Liz Elliot, Department of Criminology, Simon Fraser University,
British Columbia
A leader in the field of Restorative Justice.

Published by
Graphic North Inc.
Alaska Journal of Dispute Resolution

Alaska Journal of Dispute Resolution (ISSN: 2164-3423) is published yearly

by the University of Alaska Press.

Single copy rate for institutions $49.00 domestic, postpaid

Copying and permission notice:

Editorial Office:
Alaska Journal of Dispute Resolution
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Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-6425

©2012 Alaska Journal of Dispute Resolution. All Rights Reserved. No part
of this journal may be reprinted or reproduced in any form or by any means
without prior permission from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Permission will be granted to authors to reprint their own articles.
Printed by, Graphic North Publishing, Fairbanks, Alaska
Alaska Journal of Dispute Resolution

Senior Editor:
Editors: Richard Carr

Derek Hinckley
Heather Stewart
Lisa Balvanz
Megan Bush
Polly E. Hyslop
Lay-ouSt aarnadh JDaensei gHno lEsdteietonr :

Editorial Board Polly E. Hyslop

:
Arlie Tagayuna, Art Hinshaw, Barbara Armstrong, Brian Polkinghorn, Brenda
Morrison, Bruce Barnes, Charles Stuart, Cory R. Lepage, David Chandler, David
Wexler, Eppie Yaar, Gary Copus, Janet Martinez, Jeff May, Joanne Lewis, John Lande,
Kevin Sager, Kwaku Nuamah, Lorenn Walker, Marco Turk, Mark Stevens, Mike Daku,
Moosa Ghazi, Peter Adler, Peter DeCaro, Polly E. Hyslop, Rob Duke, Shirley Julich,
Susan Chandler, Thomas Boudreau, Tom DiGrazia, Val Binder
The Inter-University ADR Cyber-Conference Participants and Alaska Journal
of Dispute Resolution would like to thank the following individuals for their
valuable assistance and contributions:

Anne Smoke, Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, University of
Hawaii
Brian Rogers, Chancellor, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Cathy Costantino, Georgetown University
David Chandler, Sociology Department, University of Hawaii
David Wexler, University of Puerto Rico School of Law, Puerto Rico
Len Riskin, Fredric G. Levin College of Law, University of Florida
Marco Turk, Negotiation, Conflict Resolution & Peace-building Program California State
University, Dominguez Hills, California
Susan Henrichs, Provost, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Todd Sherman, Dean, College of Liberal Arts, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Val Binder, Restorative Community Conference Program, Yukon Government

We wish to acknowledge the Elders, our Traditional Peacemakers, who continue to
i nspire our contemporary work in Dispute Resolution.
Alaska Journal of Dispute Resolution

Volume 2012 Number 1

Contributors

Letting In the Locked Out: Empowering Mar ginalized Youth Through
Community Empowerment
Letting In the Locked Out: Empowering Marginalized Youth Through Community
Tania Arvanitidis .................................................................................................1
Empowerment
Tania Arvanitidis
Restorative Justice in Rural Alaska

Polly E. Hyslop ...................................................................................................17
Restorative Justice in Rural Alaska
Polly E. Hyslop
Dealing with the After Party Clean Up: The Not so Glamorous Task of

Implementing and Enforcing The Delhi Pact in Nepal
Dealing with the After Party Clean Up: The Not so Glamorous Task of Implementing and
Brian Polkinghorn & Pranaya Rana ...............................................................27
Enforcing The Delhi Pact in Nepal

Brian Polkinghorn & Pranaya Rana
Forgiveness as a Healing Agent in Cases of Traumatic Violence

F orgiveTneasms aars aa JHeenakliinngs . .A..g..e..n..t. .i.n.. .C...a..s.e..s.. .o..f. .T...r.a..u..m...a..t.i.c.. .V..i..o..l.e.n..c..e.. ...................................59
Tamara Jenkins
“ I Want None of Your Gifts!” A Moliere Mediation and the Study of
F“Ia iWluarenst Nino Tnhei ordf YPaorutyr GInitfetsrv!”e nAti oMnoliere Mediation and the Study of Failures in Third
P arty InTtehrvoemnatiso nE . Boudreau & Debra Truitt ..............................................................83
Thomas E. Boudreau & Debra Truitt
Punishment or Logical Consequences: A Response to the Punishment
PDuenbiasthem weintht ionr RLeosgtiocraalt iCveo nJsuesqtiuceences: A Response to the Punishment Debate within
R estoratCivoel lJeuesnt iPcea wlychka .............................................................................................95
Colleen Pawlychka

Managing Conflict in Communication: An Alternative Paradigm to
Managing Conflict in Communication: An Alternative Paradigm to Sino-Western
Sino-Western Negotiation Process
Negotiation Process
Peter DeCaro ....................................................................................................119
Peter DeCaro

A Second Chance: Re-Entry Mediation for Pre-Release Prisoners to
A Second Chance: Re-Entry Mediation for Pre-Release Prisoners to Reduce Recidivism
Reduce Recidivism in Maryland
in Maryland
Tyler Smith .......................................................................................................129
Tyler Smith

Letting In the Locked Out 1
Letting In the Locked Out: Empowering Marginalized Youth through
Community Solidarity

Tania Arvanitidis
Simon Fraser University

Abstract

The term “Positive youth development” is used to describe a variety of strategies aimed at helping youth
develop the personal resources necessary for healthy maturation, many of which exclusively target
marginalized youth at risk of involvement within the juvenile justice system. However, the success of these
strategies is inherently compromised because they do not fully acknowledge the way by which our current
neoliberal cultural climate, which encourages individual competitiveness and free market values above
communal responsibility, has eroded the practice of community solidarity across classes and
backgrounds. A shared sense of solidarity at the community level is essential for marginalized youth to
experience authentic integration. The author argues this climate may be successfully challenged through
the use of development initiatives for socially excluded youth that do not operate within such structural
restraints but rather, are born of grassroots social movements that fundamentally and unconditionally
endorse respect for, and solidarity with, all community members. Examples of several development
initiatives found in the United States that could be considered to fit this model are provided to illustrate
specific strategies for rebuilding community solidarity.

Introduction

While the development of nondiscriminatory juvenile justice practices has been the
subject of considerable restorative justice discourse in recent decades, there remains a
considerable lack of literature that adequately takes into account the role that key structural and
multifaceted issues, such as youth marginalization, homelessness, and child poverty, play in
accounting for the overrepresentation of lower-class youth in the juvenile justice system (Arrigo
& Schehr, 1998; Elliott, 2011; Immarigeon,1999; Morris, 2001; Pranis, 2001). Because
systemically generated conditions are inherently outside the control of individuals, it is arguable
that a juvenile justice system that holds young offenders accountable for the harms caused by
their individual actions, yet simultaneously disregards the harms caused by social inequities, does
not practice justice at all. Instead, it sends a powerful message of injustice to those youth who so
frequently find themselves threatened, punished, and rejected by their own communities due to
their assumed personal deficits (Bazemore & Terry, 1997; Boyes-Watson, 2009; Gaetz, 2004;
Giroux, 2009; Hagan & McCarthy, 1997; MacDonald, 2008; Nakkula, Foster & Bolstrom, 2010).
Community change models based on the ideology of positive youth development provide an
alternative that can adequately address such systemic inequities, as these issues are often absent
from youth justice reform.
This essay argues in support of positive youth development initiatives based on
community development principles by examining the issues that affect socially excluded youth
and delinquency through a critical perspective. I begin by first examining the circumstances that
place disenfranchised youth at risk of delinquency and the obstacles they struggle to overcome in
their unrewarding search for legitimacy, and follow by situating them within the much broader
Arvanitidis
2 ALASKA JOURNAL OF DISPUTE RESOLUTION 2012, NUMBER 1
theoretical context of a political, economic and social climate characterized by individualism,
privatization and the erosion of community solidarity – an ideology frequently described as
Neoliberalism (Giroux, 2003/2009; Grossberg, 2001/2005). In accordance with community youth
development ideology, I then analyze the particular strategies employed by three development
initiatives based in the United States – Roca, Take The Time, and GivEm40 – in order to
illustrate how such initiatives combat the large-scale factors responsible for the growing
abandonment of socially excluded youth, particularly through their efforts to rebuild and practice
community solidarity. Ultimately, this examination hopes to provide an appropriate foundation
from which others may further explore the practical development and implementation of youth
development initiatives in a variety of community settings.

I. Youth and Social Exclusion

The process of maturation from disenfranchised child to young offender, typified by
instability, insecurity, circularity, and a lack of progression, has been recounted many times over
by researchers working within the area of youth crime prevention (Bell, 2007; Boyes-Watson,
2008; Gaetz, 2004; Giroux, 2003; Hagan & McCarthy, 1997; MacDonald, 2008; Pranis &
Wedge, 2003; Walker & Walker, 1997). An understanding of the concept of “social exclusion”,
defined by Alan and Carol Walker (1997 as “the process of being shut out, fully or partially, from
any of the social, economic, political, or cultural systems which determine the social integration
of a person in society”(p.8) is crucial to understanding the large-scale societal conditions giving
rise to the disproportionate overrepresentation of lower-class youth in the juvenile justice system.
As the evidence will suggest, the inevitable criminalization of socially excluded youth can be
viewed as the end result of an escalating process of isolation bred by fundamentally unjust
societal conditions that do not adequately provide the resources necessary for legitimate
community acceptance (Boyes-Watson, 2008; Gaetz, 2002; Gaetz, 2004; Giroux, 2003; Giroux,
2009; Hagan & McCarthy, 1997; MacDonald, 2008).
Youth living in poor and disenfranchised neighborhoods must cope with many
challenging obstacles in their home environments. Socially excluded youth frequently come from
homes characterized by domestic violence, drug use, physical and sexual abuse, parental
abandonment and neglect, and displacement, all of which may compel one to run away from
home in order to escape (Alder, 1991; Bell, 2007; Boyes-Watson, 2008; Gaetz, 2004; Hagan &
McCarthy, 1997). In their research on Vancouver and Toronto street youth, Hagan and McCarthy
(1997) found that 60% of participants they surveyed had been physically abused at home; another
study by Rotheram-Borus, Mahler, Koopman, and Langabeer (1996) estimated that street youth
may be up to five times more likely than domiciled youth to report having been sexually abused
within their homes as children. Traumas such as these increase a young person’s risk of suffering
a variety of consequences injurious to healthy development and integration including low self-
esteem, an inability to form trusting relationships with adults, depression (Gaetz, 2004; Hagan &
McCarthy, 1997; Whitbeck, Hoyt & Ackley, 1997), and aggression (Gaetz, 2004; Hagan &
McCarthy, 1997). These consequences are responsible in part for the conception and sustainment
of the highly aggressive and often illegal “street rules” that characterize the lives of homeless
youth and make them ideal targets for law enforcement officials (Anderson, 1996; Gaetz, 2004;
Hagan & McCarthy, 1997).
For those youth for whom both race and class weigh heavy in their lives, marginalization
frequently defines their development as well (Bell, 2007; Boyes-Watson, 2008; Giroux, 2009;
Miller, 1996; Schissel, 1993). Legalized desegregation and anti-discrimination laws alone cannot
reverse the effects of the United States’ still-recent history of post-slavery racial discrimination
on its youth: a mere 42 percent of black youth today who enter high school graduate (Giroux,
2009; Herbert, 2007), and black students across the nation continue to be suspended and expelled
at nearly three times the rate of white students (Giroux, 2009; Witt, 2007). The legacy left by a