In my last blog post I summarized Dorothy Vaandering’s concern that without an understanding of the term “justice,” restorative justice may be a compass without a needle.  It is important not to lose the justice dimension in restorative approaches, she suggests, but we must not allow our understandings to be unduly limited by concepts such [...]

As is obvious from the gap in my posts, I’ve been taking a break from my blog this sumer.  However, I will come out of hiding long enough to post a few recent resources. They aren’t the usual summer beach reading but maybe they will be of interest anyway. Our friends at Community Justice Initiatives [...]

Guest Blog by Aaron Lyons “True justice emerges through conversation” – Howard Zehr “So, what are your thoughts on the killing of Osama Bin Laden?,” a woman inquires almost casually at a spring dinner party. Admittedly, the US military operation in Pakistan occupies the minds of many at this time – but surely this is [...]

A recent conference on our campus entitled Conversations on Attachment included two prominent scholars working in neuroscience:  Dr. James Coan, a psychologist, and Dr. Daniel Siegel, a psychiatrist.  A few points from their presentations help explain why relationships are so important: Coan: “Our brains are designed to be with other people.”  The “baseline brain” is [...]

Is restorative justice sufficiently transformative?  Should the term be “transformative” rather than “restorative” justice?  Are they different phenomena or are they one and the same? This debate has been ongoing since the origin of the field.  When trying to decide on a term in the 1980s, I considered the word transformative but rejected it as [...]

“Restorative justice is a bold and thought-provoking innovation that has engaged the energies and excited the hopes of criminal justice reformers throughout the world over the last several decades.  And yet, while it has achieved outstanding results in thousands of programs, it has remained a marginal development because it has failed to articulate a theory [...]

“Stories are the way we domesticate the world’s disorder.” (Bruce Jackson, The Story is True) My last entry emphasized the importance of story.  Since stories are essential to the experience of victims and offenders – and to all of us – I want to explore this topic a bit further here. Our histories, our identities, [...]

In a recent blog entry, a conservative blogger in the United Kingdom calls for more attention to restorative justice. Citing a speech by conservative MP Alan Duncan, the blogger suggests that restorative justice may be more than a way to reduce the revolving door or “carousel” of prison; indeed, it could have substantial benefits for [...]

Three million children in the United States are estimated to have one or both parents in prison.   Here is some information about these children: 1 in 15 African American children has a parent in prison.  For white children the figure is 1 in 110. About half of parents in prison have never had a personal [...]

“From the vantage point of the colonized, a position from which I write, and choose to privilege, the term “research” is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism.  The word itself, ‘research,’ is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary.  When mentioned in many indigenous contexts, it stirs up silence, it [...]