| Lauren Abramson, PhD is a psychologist who has worked with children and families for 20 years. She is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Community Conferencing Center in Baltimore. Abramson focused attention on Community Conferencing in Baltimore in 1996 and has collaborated with the Australian developers of the process to help clarify the theoretical explanations for its success. She advances conferencing as a means of building social capital and collective efficacy on many levels, including empowerment of individuals and communities to resolve their own conflicts, keeping young people out of the criminal justice system and mobilizing communities to work together and use their existing assets. This community justice project has involved building partnerships with communities, law enforcement, courts, schools and social services, and is groundbreaking for its use in disinvested communities in a large American city. |
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