Source: (2002) Presented at the 30th Anniversary AGM, St. Leonard’s Society (Hamilton), June 10th. St. Leonard’s Society of Canada Coast to Coast. 8(2, Fall): 1, 4-5. Downloaded 13 January 2005.
This article in Coast to Coast was first presented by the Reverend Hugh Kirkegaard as an address at the 30th anniversary annual general meeting of St. Leonard’s Society (Hamilton), on June 10, 2002. As Kirkegaard observes, restorative justice and halfway houses can easily be folded into existing justice structures. This could easily lead to the “co-option” of restorative justice and halfway houses. One of the challenges in this work, then, is to guard against the deflection of these reform efforts in the interests of “convenience.” With this in mind, Kirkegaard characterizes the restorative justice work of St. Leonard’s and other like organizations in terms of a prophetic role (from the Old Testament of the Bible) in the justice and corrections systems, and he casts a restorative vision to undergird and sustain this work.
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