“Doing unto Others: Disputes and Dispute Processing in an Urban American Neighborhood.”

Source: (1982) In: R. Tomasic and M.M. Feeley (eds.), Neighborhood Justice: Assessment of an Emerging Idea. New York, NY: Longman Inc., pp. 78-90.

This essay argues that the neighborhood-justice-center concept should be modified to fit existing patterns of disputing and resident values. Interviews with residents of a three-block area in a municipality of 100,000 located in a large Eastern metropolitan area yielded accounts of troubles and strategies for dealing with them that expressed common themes; entitlement to services is a strong principle in the neighborhood, and this feeling includes the right to have redress for grievances; self-reliance in the handling of grievances is an important theme; a strong sense that there is a proper order to follow in the pursuit of redress for troubles, moving from use of self-help to invocation of official intervention. How neighborhood justice centers could fit naturally into the existing patterns for dispute resolution is considered.