Murderers turned peacemakers

As soon as I read the letter, I was hooked, but also knew that I couldn’t do it alone. Still standing at the mailbox, I called my friend and colleague, Doug Noll, the only person I would consider working with on a project like this. Doug is a superb trainer, mediator, and restorative justice expert. I read the letter to him. He was silent for about a nano-second before he said, “I’m in. What’s our next step?”

We spent six months working our way up the chain of command to convince the prison authorities to let us run a pilot project. When we got the final approval, we selected our first fifteen women, all long term and life inmates, and the training began less than a month later.

Ten weeks later, the first 15 women were fully trained mediators and within two weeks of completing their training had conducted over 25 mediations and dozens of peace circles within the prison.

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