Restorative Justice & Other Public Health Approaches for Healing – Page 6

cop vs. professor & good modeling by President Obama!

By Lorenn | July 31, 2009 by Lorenn

My friend Lisz Rea wrote a blog about this incident regrading the cop and professor in Boston http://www.restorativejustice.org/RJOB/harvard-scholar-versus-cambridge-police and I wrote this comment in response: Thank you for the great commentary Lisa! President Obama provided a wonderful service by modeling how conflicting people can communicate and come to understand each other better. As painful as this incident was, it had positive results in teaching people to communicate, and also in addressing racial and class bias…

Conflict Management

Preventing agression by feeling our emotions

By Lorenn | July 1, 2009 by Lorenn

It takes practice to get in touch with our emotions and if we did more often we could avoid a lot of conflict. Western culture prefers logic over emotions. We get a lot of training in logical reasoning and not much training in understanding emotions and how to express our feelings. We end up with a lot of argument and fighting when we could have had understanding by feeling our emotions. Check out Debra Tannen’s…

Inspiration prisons Restorative Justice

Staying the Course to Continue Providing Restorative Justice

By Lorenn | April 29, 2009May 25, 2009 by Lorenn

“We simply have got to stay and keep helping the people touched by these programs,” says Barbara Tudor with passion and zeal. When she says she is “staying” you know she means it. She is a sturdy sixty-ish woman with curly blond short hair and clear blue eyes. Most striking is her abundant energy, which could vie with the most active teenager. Tudor may also well be the longest working victim offender mediator in the…

prisons Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice: an Inoculator to The Lucifer Effect

By Lorenn | April 28, 2009April 28, 2009 by Lorenn

Professor Philip Zimbardo has written an indepth and important book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. It is based on his experience running the prison experiment in 1971 at Stanford University where randomly selected students were chosen to be prison guards and imprisoned people. The study had to be abandoned in only a few days (and should have been earlier) because the guards became so cruel. Professor Zimbardo explains and provides lots…

Restorative Justice schools

Zero Tolerence = Zero Reality

By Lorenn | April 20, 2009 by Lorenn

I write this from Barcelona where it is a bright sunny morning. Here is a good piece on Colorado’s experience applying a zero tolerance approach at schools post the Columbine School killings: http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_12179638 The idea of zero tolerance reflects a zero vision of reality. While of course guns should not be allowed at schools, imposing blanket punishments on students for rule violations ignores reality. The nature of childhood and learning, assumes making mistakes. Please read…

Restorative Justice

RSVP:San Francisco Jail’s Violence Intervention program

By Lorenn | April 16, 2009April 20, 2009 by Lorenn

On March 2, 2009 I had the great pleasure of visiting RSVP, the San Franciso jail violence intervention program for its residents, which uses restorative justice. Along with me learning about RSVP was Carissa Phelps (someone who deserves a whole book to describe what an inspiration she is–there is already a great documentary movie describing her amazing response to a challenging childhood). It was wonderful visiting the program and also meeting with Sunny Schwartz and…

Inspiration Restorative Justice San Patrignano Solution-Focused

Imagining Miracles

By Lorenn | March 15, 2009March 15, 2009 by Lorenn

About five years ago I learned about solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_focused_brief_therapy), which focuses on “preferred futures” instead of “problem talk,” and since then I have been applying it to my work and life. While restorative justice gives us the opportunity to face wrongdoing and social injustice by imaging what we need to heal or to make things right, SFBT provides specific language skills that help us do this kind of thinking, and ultimately create…

Inspiration Restorative Justice

Obama’s Inspiration for Imprisoned People

By Lorenn | January 21, 2009January 21, 2009 by Lorenn

We are providing a restorative justice facilitation skills and solution-focused problem solving training for a group of 20 incarcerated men at Waiawa Correctional Facility on O‘ahu. A paper on this training program that we have now provided to five groups of incarcerated people, is available on my website under the Articles page and is titled A Gift of Listening for Hawai‘i Inmates. Tonight we are going to share the following photo and last few paragraphs…

prisons Rehabilitation Restorative Justice

New Restorative Prison in Canberra, Australia

By Lorenn | January 18, 2009March 5, 2012 by Lorenn

A new prison has been constructed in Canberra, Australia that is built upon the principals of restorative justice. The Alexander Maconochie Centre is an attempt to truly rehabiliate incarcerated people. Radio Netherlands Worldwide has produced an insightful story about the new prison, which Austrailian corrections Minister John Hargreaves says was designed in a restorative manner because: “We want people to realise that the facility is here to help them change their behaviour, to change their…