Former Chief Justice: Use mediation to tackle school violence crisis

School fights and mounting violence among pupils could be resolved through mediation techniques, said former Chief Justice Sir Marston Gibson who expressed alarm at the current trend of students recording physical altercations on mobile phones.

The head of the judiciary from 2011 to 2020 said on Monday that the situation “is becoming serious”. 

He was speaking to students of The St Michael School at the Mediation and Arbitration Centre during Mediation Week’s Open Day.

“There is a recent development that is frightening and it is happening among school children – fights. They are not learning how to resolve their differences, they want to fight. And somebody always has one of these to record it for reasons that I have no idea,” he said, displaying a mobile phone to his audience at the Henry Forde and David Simmons Complex on Coleridge Street.

The former Chief Justice advocated for “restorative practices”, citing successful implementations in Trinidad. He described a technique called “circling” where pupils hold hands in a circle whilst discussing their grievances with a mediator or teacher present.

“I have a friend who is a teacher in Trinidad and she is a serious proponent of restorative practices,” he said. “When there is a dispute there is a thing that they practise called circling. Students get in a circle and hold hands, so everybody can see everyone else and then the teacher or the mediator says: ‘Tell us now exactly what it is that is happening between the two of you or all of you’ and they talk.

“They realise once they start to talk about the dispute, it starts to tone down and they start to see things in a different light so now I don’t have to pick up a bottle or something else because we can talk it through.” 

While acknowledging that fights occurred during his own school days, Sir Marston noted that disputes were typically resolved by the following day with friendships restored.

He highlighted that mediated settlements often achieve higher compliance rates than court orders, attributing this to the parties’ direct involvement in resolution. “Mediation and conciliation tend to be very successful because you have left it to the parties themselves to resolve their differences,” he said.

But the retired jurist expressed disappointment that the Impact Justice’s Community Mediation project, led by Professor Velma Newton, had “not taken off”. He emphasised the importance of community mediators, suggesting roles for Justices of the Peace, priests, and retired head teachers.

“The idea that if you know a mediator, a Justice of the Peace, a priest, an old head teacher, someone who can come in and help the parties work out the issue. That is what mediation is all about. It’s about maintaining relationships between people,” he stressed, adding another major benefit was that it was much cheaper and quicker than litigation. 

jeniquebelgrave@barbadostoday.bb