South African Programme Shows Promise

The Phoenix JARP pilot programme is a collaborative effort by the non-governmental organization Khulisa, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development with funding from the Royal Danish Embassy. Its stated objectives are to:

• Enable the community to assume a greater role in dealing with crime, wrong doing and conflict instead of relying solely on the criminal justice system
• Enable offenders to take responsibility for their wrong doing and bring healing to victims and the community
• Increase crime prevention awareness and participation with a view to an eventual decrease in crime
• Provide a model or guidelines for replication in other communities
• Contribute to a reduction in the court roll through the introduction of ADR and restorative justice approaches
• Utilize trained community members as part of the project

In March 2007, Khulisa trained 20 community members in conflict resolution skills, restorative justice and communication skills. The training also included referral and intake processes, mentoring, monitoring and evaluation. Four prosecutors also participated in the event. Phoenix JARP began receiving referrals from the prosecutor’s office in April 2007. Mediators meet separately with the victim and offender to describe the programme and listen to their stories. If the mediation is successful, the parties sign an agreement that is sent to the court for the case to be removed from the court rolls.

From April to December 2007, Phoenix JARP received 503 cases from the NPA. The evaluation included 368 of these.  It sought to:

• Evaluate the impact of JARP on crime victims, offenders, their families, friends and the Phoenix community
• Assess the impact of JARP on court backlogs
• Identify means of improvement for the programme

To meet these goals, the researchers asked victims, offenders, mediators, and police officers to complete questionnaires. They also held focus group meetings with mediators, representatives of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development and the NPA, leaders from various NGOs, and members of the JARP steering committee.

In gauging the impact of JARP on the community, the research presented mixed results. Community members were asked to complete questionnaires in November 2006 before the programme started and again in November 2007 after several months of operation. Questions included:

• Do you feel safe in Phoenix?
• Who could reduce crime in Phoenix?
• How do you feel about ADR?
• Are you comfortable with the referral of minor cases to ADR?
• Do you understand ADR?
• Do you think ADR will have a positive impact in Phoenix?

In the question about safety, the response dropped from 33% in the pre-project surveys (N=969) to 11.9% in the post-project surveys (N=676). The question about who could reduce crime also saw a significant decrease in the number of respondents saying “the community”, from 51.8% to 23.8%. However, the questions dealing specifically with the ADR processes of Phoenix JARP saw improvement in the post-project surveys:

• 66.3% felt good about ADR as opposed to 41.4% before the project
• 67.9% were comfortable with minor crimes being referred to JARP; up from 47.8%
• 67.8% felt they understood ADR an increase from 57.3%
• 76.1% agreed that ADR could have a positive impact on Phoenix up from 65.7%

In terms of participant satisfaction with the programme, both victims and offenders in the 368 completed cases were also asked to complete surveys.
Offender results:

• 92.1% said they were happy about participating in mediation
• 87.7% said the mediation assisted them in addressing underlying issues to their offending behaviour

Victim results:

• 85.8% were satisfied with the way the mediator prepared them for the mediation
• 70.1% said the mediation helped reduce fear of further attack by the offender
• 77.4% said the offender showed understanding of the consequences of crime during the mediation session
• 80.2% said they received justice through the mediation process

In terms of lowering the court backlog, the Phoenix JARP has made a significant contribution. In the six months preceding the project start (September 2006-February 2007), the Phoenix court had 5567 cases with 1529 being older than 6 months. From April to August 2007, the court roll dropped to 2819 cases with 438 older than 6 months.

From their findings, the project evaluators recommend the continuation of Phoenix JARP and suggest the following items as ways of improving the service to the community:

•  A special team of victims and offenders who have participated in the process should be organized to provide workshops about ADR at schools, churches, NGOs, women’s and men’s groups, and groups of business people.
• The office of Khulisa and the NPA should be located close to one another
• The model Khulisa has developed should be exported to other regions of South Africa.

March 2008