Violent juveniles serving life without parole: When victims of crime disagree
August 7, 2009
Two victims of crime who have been active on many issues related to criminal justice reform testified at this hearing in June before the Senate Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security in Washington, D.C. The witnesses included Linda White, member of Murder Victims for...
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Video Review: An Introduction to Restorative Practices at Endeavour High School
August 4, 2009
The video is a wonderful story of how restorative justice can work effectively in settings where the people are willing to commit to it. The story is mostly told via interviews with the students, teachers, and administrators. All of them speak about what they see as positive about the...
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Video Review: The Meaning of Life
August 4, 2009
Upon arriving, new inmates are inducted into the prison with traditional Aboriginal expressions of hospitality. They are given blankets as a sign of peace and protection and shown around the place so they know it is their home rather than their cage. Inmates and staff alike join...
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Rape and restorative justice
August 2, 2009
If the rape alone was not traumatizing enough, the 8-year-old’s family disowned her for fear that she would bring shame to the family. Phoenix Police Sgt. Andy Hill told the press, “The father told the case worker and an officer in her presence that he didn’t want her back....
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Intimate partner violence: Towards a sociological understanding
August 2, 2009
Furthermore the adversarial system does not make provision for reconciliation or a means to resolve conflicts. It does not attempt to deal with the root causes of intimate partner violence and is therefore only a short term solution. The Domestic Violence Act is often used as one of the...
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One step among many
August 2, 2009
Even where convictions are obtained, there is dispute over the measures that should result. Hauling perpetrators to prison or meting out strokes of the cane may not always be appropriate for the circumstances, and will never by themselves do away with sexual violence. Restorative justice...
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Gacaca’s end and its legacy
August 2, 2009
….But somewhere in the process of retrofitting it for mass atrocity, gacaca appears to have lost its core restorative justice defining qualities. In my upcoming article “Complementarity and Alternative Justice†(to be published in the Oregon Law Review), I explore this...
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Overcoming speechlessness: A poet encounters “the horror” in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palestine/Israel
August 2, 2009
…. But both South Africa and Rwanda present a model of restorative justice in their Truth and Reconciliation Councils. Some crimes against humanity are so heinous nothing will ever rectify them. All we can do is attempt to understand their causes and do everything in our power to prevent...
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Restorative justice, survivors and the death penalty
August 2, 2009
The second was a blog entry written by Linda Booker, a filmmaker who has recently completed a documentary called, Love Lived on Death Row. It begins: If you had told me four years ago on the day I received my Certificate in Documentary Studies from Duke University that my first major project...
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Facilitating Communication
August 2, 2009
I was at a complete loss as how to respond. Since I volunteer with a court referred programme, I didn’t want to stop the conference with his refusal to answer the question. This would not have gone well for him with the courts. At the same time, a part of me wanted to hold the...
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Book Review: Urban Crime Prevention, Surveillance and Restorative Justice.
July 30, 2009
In the UK, adult focused restorative justice is increasingly used to blend the criminal justice system with conferencing and community mediation or conflict resolution centers. Restorative justice is used as more than a diversionary tool in low-level cases for first offenders. Court...
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Harvard scholar versus Cambridge police
July 30, 2009
What ensued from this point on is what many of us are talking about in the U.S. The arresting Cambridge police officer, Sgt. James Crowley, attempted to investigate the possible break-in. Much is not clear regarding who said what and how. But what is clear is that race in America and how...
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The power of storytelling, using stories in community and in connecting
July 29, 2009
I really love the use of written story, but I appreciate the oral story more, because it happens in Restorative Justice talking Circles. There is something that happens when we listen to a good story. We construct our story along side the one that we hear. We can place ourselves...
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Shame and restorative processes
July 29, 2009
….Shame can be positive when it motivates us to do the right thing – when we modify our behavior, then put shame behind. But shame is essentially a threat to our self-worth and when shame “sticks†to us, it is debilitating. In fact, I am convinced that shame plays a...
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Conference Explores Creating Restorative Localities
July 28, 2009
In the plenary session Hull – Towards a Restorative City, Mark Finnis described the work of the Hull Centre for Restorative Practices in creating a “restorative city†where “everyone working with children, young people, and families employ restorative practices as the...
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