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'They are not scum'
from the article on iol.co.za:
Churches should speak out strongly when they encountered abuse in prisons, Deputy Minister of Correctional Services Hlengiwe Mkhize said on Monday.
Addressing a Cape Town conference on pastoral care in prisons, she said people of faith of all religions were supposed to be "the moral authority of the most vulnerable".
They had to be vigilant and speak out on violations of the Constitution and the Correctional Services Act.
"We expect the church and other faith-based organisations to take a strong stance when deaths in correctional centres are reported and when offenders are deprived of other rights and privileges such as parole," she said.
Oct 16, 2009 Religion, Region: Africa, Community, Country:South Africa
A Pilot Study of a faith-based restorative justice intervention for Christian and non-Christian offenders
from the journal article by Armour, Windsor, Aguilar, and Taub in Journal of Psychology and Christianity:
Restorative justice and faith-based programs are receiving increased attention as innovative ways to help change offenders' internal motivations as well as external behaviors (Rockefeller institute of Government, 2007). The purpose of the present pilot study is to examine change in offenders' pro-social responses after participation in an in-prison faith-based program that draws from the principles of restorative justice.
Family Group Decision Making Helps Prison Inmates Reintegrate into Society
for 21 September by Deni Thurman-Eyer and Laura Mirsky
Family group decision making (FGDM), known in New Zealand, the UK and Europe as family group conferencing or FGC, is proving to be a beneficial restorative practice to help reintegrate prison inmates back into society. This article addresses restorative FGDM/FGC programs in prisons in Adams County, Pennsylvania, USA, and in Hungary.
Beginning in New Zealand in 1989 in the youth justice and child welfare systems, FGDM/FGC operates according to the premise that the direct involvement of a family group works better to solve a family’s issues than the efforts of professionals alone to solve those issues for people. A key ingredient of an FGDM meeting is “Family Alone Time,” when the family group is left alone, without professionals in the room, to devise plans to solve their own issues. These plans are then evaluated by professionals for legal and safety concerns.
Community Service Foundation, a model program of the IIRP, provides FGDM conferences for youth and families in Pennsylvania. (Please see www.familypower.org for links to articles about FGDM/FGC.)
It Takes a Village, a private service provider based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, provides FGDM for youth and families. Agency program manager Dewaine Finkenbinder began using FGDM with adjudicated prisoners in Adams County in 2003. Adams was the first county in the nation to utilize a cross-system approach involving both the department of children and youth services and justice agencies, said Finkenbinder.
