Victims abused then denied care: 8 states allow practice
October 13, 2009
How does this apply to restorative justice? Victims of crime need relief, healing and restoration as much as possible. Can we talk about restorative justice without seeing the full needs of victims of crime? I don’t think so. By allowing health insurance companies to deny coverage based...
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I love my job!
October 13, 2009
Two boys got into A fight today at recess. I had an opportunity to talk with them. They did really well at figuring out what went down between them and what part they each played in it. They apologized, and agreed to work together in writing down a new version of the story that would...
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New Report Explores Indigenous Conflict Resolution Mechanisms in Australia
October 13, 2009
…This report identifies a number of critical factors for effective practice which are designed to assist practitioners and others involved in the design and delivery of a dispute managementprocess. They highlight the importance of parties’ ownership of processes, of careful...
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Good news from Canada on Circles of Support and Accountability
October 9, 2009
“We got the thumbs up,” Andrew McWhinnie, the national co-ordinator of the 15-year-old program, told The Canadian Press. He’d originally been informed that the funding application had been spiked by the minister’s office after getting bureaucratic approval. McWhinnie...
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Radical change
October 8, 2009
The social worker emailed me “he must be on the programme†she wrote. “Noâ€, I wrote back “I wish you had told me about this before the interviews, but we could risk a fight if we bump someone for him nowâ€. Three days later the social worker informed me that...
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Forget it, Roman? Polanski and the politics of what we remember
October 6, 2009
For me, for a start, that would mean no petitions to stop Polanksi’s extradition; and no lynch mobs lining up to destroy him for what he did; getting serious about a restorative justice process that seeks to respect the suffering of victims/survivors and hold people accountable for...
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A Pilot Study of a faith-based restorative justice intervention for Christian and non-Christian offenders
October 6, 2009
….The findings from this pilot study show that the Restoring Peace intervention seems to change offenders’ moral motivations. Other variables may be impacting this change as well. Moreover, the voluntary nature of participation in restorative justice programs creates the...
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Federal prison-overhaul plan dismissed as amateur, alarming
October 6, 2009
….The 2007 panel said that repealing statutory release, which is currently followed by a period of mandatory supervision in the community, would enhance public safety because it would reduce the number of prisoners who reoffend after release. Stewart and Jackson counter that one of the...
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Interview with Pierre Allard on Rwanda and DRC
October 6, 2009
In the first (6:53 minutes) he describes becoming a prison chaplain and how his experience as the survivor of a homicide led him to a commitment to restorative justice. In the second (6:27 minutes) and third (8:02 minutes) he describes his current work with Just Equipping in Rwanda and the...
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Resolving conflicts using traditional mechanisms in the Karamoja and Teso regions of Uganda
October 6, 2009
The formal state mechanisms for justice and conflict resolution are not adequately implanted in the two regions. They struggle to cope with the present level of conflicts. In some cases the state apparatus is mistrusted by local communities due to associations with past abuses. Traditional,...
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Dark charges from Mahony’s inner circle
October 4, 2009
I first wrote on this subject in November 2002 as I was encouraged by a colleague of mine, a former Catholic, to put my thoughts down on paper. Those thoughts then became an “open letter to the Catholic Church” which were shared, I’m told, with the U.S. Catholic Bishops. The...
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Handing back the conflict
October 4, 2009
That seems to sum up the idea of handing back the conflict to its owners, assisted but not controlled by a third party; it is an expression of faith in people’s ability to find common ground. That’s what a non-authoritarian society would be like, with the use...
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What are we looking for?
October 4, 2009
For some, there is a punitive streak asking for complete acknowledgement of the harm done from offenders from the start. I see this in the question of “did you see remorse.†Or the accusation that I’m “too soft†after stopping a pre-conference in which the new...
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Sex offender project in limbo amid funding flap
September 29, 2009
The program was seeking $1.5 million annually for five years, with what McWhinnie said was the full support of the federal crime prevention centre. The 15-year-old circles program, which operates on a shoe-string budget at 16 sites across Canada, had hoped to double the number of sexual and...
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