ABSTRACT
Despite the growing interest in restorative community justice in general (Bazemore and Schiff, 2001) and restorative conferencing in particular, very little is known about how, where, and to what degree these decision-making models are operating within the United States (Schiff, 1998; Kurki, 2003). The data presented here begin to address some of the most basic questions about where and how many conferencing programs are currently operating, what types of models are being employed, who these programs are serving, and how these models/programs are distributed across states and other governmental regions. While we cannot claim to provide an exhaustive count of all conferencing programs, these findings do provide a basic, ‘snapshot’ summary designed to help generally estimate the prevalence of conferencing programs nationwide. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, this information gives a baseline from which to track the growth or reduction of conferencing programs over time in the United States.
