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Building blocks

Building blocks are core classes of interventions that are commonly used to prevent and resolve conflicts

Effective treatments for justice problems

Where are the vaccines, diets, antibiotics, antiviral drugs, surgical interventions and non-invasive treatments delivered by the justice sector? Why are resolution rates HiiL finds in its Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) surveys always hovering around 35 percent? What is the strategy to improve the treatments that are currently available?

The legal system’s approach to preventing and resolving justice problems is to apply the law to cases that are brought to court or settled. The basic treatment consists of applying norms, investigating, and delivering sanctions. Police, lawyers, prosecutors, and judges play a prominent role in this, although they only treat between 4 and 15 percent the justice problems that people experience.

In practice, justice problems are treated in many other ways. People help themselves or resolve disputes informally through alternatives like mediation and restorative justice.

Building blocks of prevention and resolution

When we say mediation, what does that mean beyond talking with a neutral third party? What do we know about what makes a justice treatment effective?

The building blocks can be broken down into seven basic categories: building blocks for preventing, building blocks for mapping facts, building blocks for convening, building blocks for communicating, building blocks for resolving, building blocks for moving forward, and building blocks for aftercare.

Preventing

Mapping Facts

Convening

Communicating

Resolving

Moving Forward

Aftercare

Combining building blocks

An effective justice treatment will generally consist of a combination of interventions. The building blocks and the interventions they contain can be combined and adapted in different ways by system designers, justice providers, or the parties to conflict themselves to address a range of civil and criminal justice problems. The building blocks most relevant to a resolution process will change depending on the problem type, but an effective justice treatment will typically contain at least one building block from each of the seven core categories identified above.

For all 15 building blocks there is substantial evidence that they are effective for preventing and resolving crime problems and disputes. The mechanisms through which the building block interventions “work” on people are at least partly known.

How were the building blocks developed?

While working together at Tilburg University, Martin Gramatikov, Corry van Zeeland, Jin Ho Verdonschot and other justice researchers identified five essential building blocks: Meeting, Talking (now Respecting, Understanding and Shaping Solutions), Sharing, Deciding and Stabilizing.

This first iteration of the building blocks was based on mixed methods social science research on what works to meet people’s justice needs. They were further distilled through practical experience and testing at a conference.

These five original building blocks were later used to design Rechtwijzer, one of the first one-stop-shop online dispute resolution platforms for separation, neighbor conflicts and landlord-tenant disputes.

HiiL later drew on the five building blocks as part of its international best practices research, to get a better understanding of why similar interventions were recommended for preventing and resolving family, neighbour, land, employment and crime problems.

Realising that the first iteration had overlooked prevention and important elements of criminal justice processes, HiiL researchers added 10 additional building blocks, including for example Norming, Containing, Fact-finding, Restoring, and Punishing.

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Building blocks

Preventing

Norming

Documenting

Containing

Mapping Facts

Fact-finding

Convening

Meeting

Communicating

Respecting

Understanding

Resolving

Shaping solutions

Sharing

Accepting

Deciding

Moving Forward

Restoring

Punishing

Aftercare

Stabilising

Improving

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