More Dayton residents have conflict during COVID-19. Mediation comes to the rescue.

The city's health department wants to send ex-offenders who are trained to be "violence interrupters" to hospitals to talk with victims. Chicago has found such a program prevents repeat injuries.

In order to disrupt cycles of violence, Milwaukee’s Homicide Review Commission has recommended that Milwaukee police examine how their peers in Rochester, N.Y., organize police work around the concept of preventing disputes from escalating into violence.

In Pascagoula, a youth court judge observed a high number of youth stuck in the system. The judge reached out to local schools, discouraging them from involving law enforcement in minor incidents that put juveniles into a vicious cycle of detention and jail. Instead, the judge encouraged educators to get more involved in constructive mediation and intervention.

A decrease in arrests in Chicago public schools is a result of the district moving away from a zero-tolerance policy for discipline and acting in favor of more instructional intervention. This approach has allowed for kids experiencing trauma and lashing out to receive better care and direction than is provided by punitive action.

Cure Violence is a the national non-profit organization that for 16 years has helped multiple cities adopt strategies for violence prevention that mirror those used in disease control. Programs employ trained “violence interrupters” and outreach workers to identify and mediate potentially deadly conflicts, maintaining relationships with those involved to ensure the conflict does not reignite. Cleveland hopes that replicating the model will help reduce local violence and crime.

Organizations that supply funds to provide bail for people arrested for misdemeanors not only saves money for taxpayers, but reduces the number of guilty pleas, and could possibly save lives. Those who cannot pay for bail must either await trial in jail or plead guilty, leading to permanent criminal records. Organizations like the Bronx Freedom Fund supply $2,000 or less to help these individuals keep jobs, housing, and reduce the risk of suicide in jail without requiring them to plead guilty.

A growing number of tribal judges nationwide - including Judge Abby Abinanti of the Yurok Tribal Court - are using a framework of traditional culture and an approach known as "restorative justice" to address both the need for rehabilitation of offenders and resolution for people often failed by the dominant criminal justice system.

In the Great Lakes region of Africa, land disputes can escalate to violence. Subsistence agriculture is the dominant source of income, making land precious, and as populations increase and refugees return home, property rights are not always clear. Search for Common Ground is reducing violence by training mediators to find peaceful ways of resolving these high-stakes conflicts.

As the national education discussion has shifted away from zero tolerance discipline policies towards reduction of suspensions and the introduction of restorative justice tactics, some teachers and administrators say the change is happening too fast. Following the elimination of suspensions, at one school in Washington state, each year almost 13 percent of district staff left. Teachers cited lack of training and inconsistencies between standards and implementation in different classrooms as reasons for departing.

Indianapolis' Howe High School has joined the movement surfacing in America's public schools towards restorative justice. In 2015, in lieu of suspensions and expulsions, Howe's leadership formed a peer justice jury to help fighting students talk through their conflicts and anger. Just one year after the program's inception, the school's expulsion rate decreased 90 percent, saving over 600 hours of what otherwise would have been students' lost classroom time.