Rick Prashaw is an educator and facilitator from Ottawa, Canada. He speaks to a wide variety of audiences and leads workshops on restorative justice, the death penalty, retribution, fear of crime and healthy communities.   

Rick is communications director for Canada’s Church Council on Justice and Corrections, a national ecumenical coalition founded in 1974.  The Church Council advocates for social justice measures whose aim is to make communities and people more whole.  Rick researched and co-authored a book for the Council, titled Satisfying Justice, on credible alternatives to prison and why there aren’t more.  Together with other Church Council staff, Rick was a 1999 recipient of the first national Ron Wiebe Restorative Justice Award from Correctional Service of Canada.

Rick’s work has included:  

• Founding member of the national Youth Justice Education Partnership, a multi-sector education network in the youth justice field

• Designing and facilitating education processes – i.e., crime scene scenarios and criminal justice case scenarios - to help community members and criminal justice professionals study both restorative and retributive approaches to justice

• Putting criminal justice for the churches within a healthy community and social justice agenda.

• Promoting a conversation on God’s Justice as healing or retribution

• Challenge the “addiction to punishment” prevalent in many jurisdictions, especially as it impacts young people

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Faith Communities and Restorative Justice  - I Hope We Dance  

For people of faith, the subject of crime and  justice brings up other, quite profound matters - human suffering, evil, punishment, healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, etc.. Many faith traditions have begun to unearth and revivify the spiritual roots of restorative justice inherent in original sacred texts and traditions.   

“Making things right”, and transforming communities and relationships, should have meaning for people of faith. 

But this will not be easy, and some will resist.  

Spiritual treasures have been lost. 

Retribution and restoration theologies clash. 

Faith communities and their members find themselves individually and collectively on all sides of the crime equation as victim or accused or prisoner. Some worry that restorative justice is losing its soul, its values. 

The national church coalition I work for in Canada is nurturing a conversation on these profound issues as we explore the significance of restorative justice for faith communities.  

--Rick Prashaw

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Leading Edge. In association with The Church Council on Justice and Corrections, Rick is currently designing  “crime scene scenarios” that lead people from a crime scene scenario through the police, courts and jails processes and then to a circle to teach about existing system and restorative justice approaches.

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Reach Rick Prashaw at  rprashaw@ccjc.ca.

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