Restorative justice behind bars

from the article by Stacy Howard on the Criminal Justice section of Seattle University's website:

This summer, Seattle University's Criminal Justice program took students out of the classroom and into prison cells. SU’s criminal justice chair and a sociology professor teamed up to create a new pilot course that provided a unique learning experience for students.

Sep 14, 2012 Region: North America and Caribbean, Other, Victim, Prison, Country:USA

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Meeting the murderer: Profile of victim-offender dialogue facilitator

from the entry on Grits for Breakfast:

See an interesting article from the Christian Science Monitor about a boat builder from Maine who runs a non-profit facilitating victim-offender dialogue (VOD) between violent criminals and their victims or their families, which is an idea derived from "restorative justice" models. 

Apr 27, 2012 Dialogue, Victim, Offender, Other, Region: North America and Caribbean, Prison, Country:USA

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Restorative justice provides new path for prisoners

from the article by Jesse Bishop in the Misourian:

....This is no television prison. There is no guard or glass wall. There are no handcuffs or restraints, just a couple of cameras and a conversation. A conversation about where they came from, why they’re here, but most importantly a conversation about where they’re going. It’s a path with few options.

“On the other side of that door, it’s either hell or redemption,” Baumgardner says. “You choose.”

“That door” leads to the bowels of Jefferson City Correctional Center, a maximum security prison. Starr, Baumgardner and King have all chosen the latter path. Hell is what got them here. Restorative Justice offers them a chance to change that.

Feb 17, 2012 Region: North America and Caribbean, Other, Victim, Prison, Country:USA, Restitution

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At this prison graduation, the focus is on knowing the effects of their crimes

from Doug Erickson's article in Wisconsin State Journal:

....During this season of high school and college graduations, 16 men received a very different kind of diploma Monday at Columbia Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison.

Over three months, the inmates voluntarily completed a 30-session course on restorative justice, a curriculum meant to help them understand how much they'd harmed their victims, the community and themselves. For some of them, Monday's graduation ceremony was the first time they'd done anything worthy of even minimal praise.

"I've been in all sorts of programs and always been kicked out," said Darren Morris, 33, whose peers voted him class speaker.

May 28, 2010 Region: North America and Caribbean, Other, Victim, Prison, Country:USA

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Restorative Justice: Crime and Healing

From the article by Robert C. Koehler at IHaveNet.com. 

"I have nowhere to talk about this except here in a prison setting," Peg said. "You are my community."

The circle grew close, intimate -- sacred -- as the three women spoke.

There were about 35 of us in all, sitting on hard plastic chairs. Twenty wore green: the inmates. The building was wrapped in razor wire. It was a maximum-security prison called Columbia Correctional Institution, in Portage, Wis. Built for 450 prisoners, it houses, two decades after it opened, about 900. The setting was old justice, but something new was happening.

Not all that new, maybe. Restorative Justice -- a multifaceted system of criminal justice and conflict resolution that puts healing and truth-telling at its core, not punishment, revenge or the culling out of humanity's undesirables -- has been around and evolving for about 20 years now. It's slowly gaining a foothold in court systems and schools around the world: It is part, I'm certain, of an invisible wave of change that is transforming the planet. Nothing about it is simple, but something precious beyond compare can emerge from the process. Suffering can abate, torn lives and broken communities can heal, good can come from bad.

Apr 20, 2010 Region: North America and Caribbean, Other, Victim, Prison, Country:USA

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