Scenario: You are a sworn police officer, but because you possess a college degree in criminal justice, you have been assigned to work for 6 months to a year as a staff officer in the office of the chief of police. Your chief came up through the ranks at a time when community-policing programs were a new aspect of social policy designed to create a more positive image of police officers as partners with neighborhood organizations and communities.
Recently, there have been some skirmishes between members of the African-American community and Somali refugee groups, and most of the perpetrators on both sides are juveniles, although some are adults. The Somali community members were resettled in your city and several others on humanitarian grounds as part of a federally supported program to aid people fleeing their nations in the aftermath of war.
Other cities with significant Somali refugee communities include the following:
Columbus, Ohio
Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
Hartford, Connecticut
Salt Lake City, Utah
In your city ,the individual cases where fighting occurred between Somali refugees and members of the African-American community have been dealt with through the courts where appropriate, but the chief would like to understand the issues better to respond with proactive solutions to the potential for escalated violence. He has had a meeting with the administrative director of the courts and is anxious for the police department to explore the possibility of working with the juvenile court system in the city to establish a program through which crimes of youth offenders could be addressed outside of traditional judicial proceedings.
One possibility raised in this meeting was establishing a victim/offender program based on restorative justice, sometimes called restorative dialogue. An emphasis on working with the African-American and Somali refugee community issues would be the focus of a pilot program. You have been assigned to write a short report for the chief focusing on the following issues:
He wants a better understanding of the issues causing the violence.
He would like to know whether similar problems have occurred in other cities where Somali refugee communities have settled and how these were handled.
He would like to be made aware of the range of options for dispute resolution including alternative approaches (ADR or alternative dispute resolution).
He wants your thoughts and recommendations.