Short History of Mediation
Community Mediation is not a new concept. Traditionally neighbors, extended family and the clergy handled mediating community conflicts. During the 1960's and 70's our society changed becoming a highly mobile and urbanized population where traditional methods lost out to the unfamiliarity of new neighbors and the distance from trusted members of ones family and clergy. By the mid 1970's many people in the justice system began questioning the effectiveness of the court systems as delay and high cost of the courts became frustrating for people who sought resolution through the court system. During this time the Neighborhood Justice Center project was created out of various justice reform programs. The recommendation from this project was to create neighborhood justice centers. 6 test centers were established and out of these evolved the community mediation programs we have today. Some of the early goals were to decentralize the control of decision-making, develop community leadership, and reduce community tension .
In 1989 a 7 member Oregon Dispute Resolution Commission was established to promote "out of court" dispute resolution programs. From 1989 to 2003 the ODRC had grown from a few community programs to overseeing some 23 centers and statewide public policy dispute resolution programs. In August of 2003 the state legislature disbanded the ODRC. The legislature delegated the administration of the 23 successfully programs to the University of Oregon School of Law to administer the community programs, the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University to operate the public policy dispute resolution program and court mediation standards to the Oregon Judicial Department (Carmichael and Hallmark, 2004) .
Today the Office of Community Dispute Resolution under the University of Oregon School of Law administers some 20 community based programs around the state with Blue Mountain Mediation being the newest member of this group. Since 1989 the community mediation programs in Oregon have handled over 40,000 cases serving 70,000 clients.
| 