Prison-Community Relations

Articles about community involvement in prisons and efforts by prisons to engage with their communities.

Restorative practices in Hungary: An ex-prisoner is reintegrated into the community

from the article by Vidia Negrea: As the representative of Community Service Foundation of Hungary, the Hungarian affiliate of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), I participated in a group session of the Hungarian Crime Prevention and Prison Mission Foundation in summer 2009 (Sycamore Tree Project — www.pfi.org/cjr/stp/introduction — or Zacchaeus Program in Hungary). There I met the governor of Balassagyarmat prison, where inmates were working in groups on issues related to their crimes and exploring ways to repair relationships they had damaged. Some inmates began accepting responsibility for what they had done and were motivated to make things right and earn forgiveness of victims and their families. Prisoners made symbolic reparation in the form of community service within the prison, but there was still a lot to do to create opportunities for offenders to make contact with victims and shed the stigma of their offense by means of direct reparation. Also, prison management believed it important to support processes, acceptable to victimized families and communities, to help prisoners regain control of their lives and prevent reoffending.

Missouri prisons grow 50 tons of food for pantries

from the article on stltoday.com: Missouri prisoners have raised more than 50 tons of vegetables and fruit that have been given to food pantries around the state. The Department of Corrections says this year's harvest was significantly higher than last year's, when the agency donated 29 tons of produce through its Restorative Justice Garden Program. Under the program, the seeds and plants are donated to the Corrections Department, which then donates all the resulting food to local pantries.

Restorative justice and the challenge of prison reform

from Brian Steels' recent paper: Crucially, prisoners have to learn to accept responsibility for the harm their criminal activities have caused to individual victims, family and neighbourhood. This largely transformative component is implemented at the beginning of any given prison sentence and is maintained throughout the term of custody. ....Wherever practical and possible, prisoners are made responsible for any financial compensation owed to victims. To this end, a restoration fund may be established and prisoners able to earn money in order to pay victim compensation. This encourages a degree of responsibility in prisoners whilst providing reparation for victims.

Restorative justice for people who are innocent & wrongfully imprisoned

from Lorenn Walker's blog: Recently, I saw how successfully RJ was used by someone who has steadfastly maintained innocence, and who does not take responsibility for the crimes she is in prison for. The woman is serving several life sentences for crimes that she has denied since being convicted after a trial about 20 years ago. She was 18 when she went into prison and she has not seen two of her now adult children since then. Most of her children want a relationship with her and she wants one with them. The woman learned about restorative justice in a course we provide* in the prison, and she used an RJ process to focus how she could restore her relationship with her children, and address the harm caused them and herself, by her teenage drug use and her imprisonment.

Prisons, rehabilitation and justice

by Lynette Parker Recently, I read an article about the struggles faced by the state of Florida after the US Supreme Court banned sentences of life without parole for juveniles who do not kill anyone. In the discussion over the need to revisit cases and re-sentence the offenders, one retired judge was quoted: “There are no resources in prisons for rehabilitation,'' the former judge said. ``You give him 30 years, and he'll get out when he's 45, what's he going to do? Re-offend. Some people, regardless of their age, need to be put away forever.”

What were they thinking? Horse farms and inmates?

from the blog entry by Peter Hermann on BaltimoreSun.com: It was one of those feel-good programs that come across reporters' desks nearly every day. This was from the state prison system: "Restorative Justice Benefits Women Inmates and Starving Horses." Here's what the news release said: The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services today added yet another to its growing list of unique restorative justice inmate initiatives, putting a work crew comprised of female inmates at Howard County’s Days End Farm Horse Rescue. The inmates, from the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women (MCI-W) in Jessup, will begin with grounds maintenance and landscaping, and eventually move into equine care. “What we try to do with these restorative justice programs is not only give inmates skills and the chance to pay back the society they’ve harmed, but meaningful projects that really do make a difference in the lives of people -- and in this case, horses,” said DPSCS Secretary Gary Maynard. Only state prison officials forgot to tell the neighbors of the horse farm, as well as the young volunteers who work there. Now, state officials have shut down the program, according to a story by The Baltimore Sun's Larry Carson.

Lessons in transformation: "You gotta smile at the little f…ers"

By KIm Workman Last night, Maori Television screened the first of a two part programme dealing with the issue of family violence and child abuse. ‘Tamariki Ora - A New Beginning’ was a defining moment for Maori. It showed Maori men acknowledging that the abuse they received as children, turned them into abusers of their own children. But it also showed the extent to which whanau (families) are acknowledging the issues, forging their own solutions, and actively working within their whanau and the community to encourage positive, loving relationships. I recall in my own marae (*meeting house) , less than 20 years ago, female elders defending a male elder who had sexually abused a visiting school child, as being a practise that was culturally acceptable in traditional times. We all knew that was nonsense, but no one had the guts to face the issue head on. Those days are now well and truly gone. I wept tears at the programme – but they were tears of joy. From this day on, no one will ever be able to say that Maori are failing to take responsibility for their own behaviour.

Norway builds the world's most humane prison

But how restorative is it? from William Lee Adams' article in Time: Ten years and 1.5 billion Norwegian kroner ($252 million) in the making, Halden is spread over 75 acres (30 hectares) of gently sloping forest in southeastern Norway. The facility boasts amenities like a sound studio, jogging trails and a freestanding two-bedroom house where inmates can host their families during overnight visits. Unlike many American prisons, the air isn't tinged with the smell of sweat and urine. Instead, the scent of orange sorbet emanates from the "kitchen laboratory" where inmates take cooking courses. "In the Norwegian prison system, there's a focus on human rights and respect," says Are Hoidal, the prison's governor. "We don't see any of this as unusual."

Prisons in the sky

by Dan Van Ness One of the persistent themes in penology has been the idea that architecture can help produce transformation in people. From the monastery-like isolation of prisoners in the Walnut Street Jail and its successor the Eastern State Penitentiary in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries to the Auburn model allowing for aggregate work but individual isolation, to Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, to today's Supermax prisons, form has indeed followed function. Now eVolo magazine has awarded first place in its 2010 Skyscraper Competition to Malaysian architectural students for their Vertical Prison, conceived of as somehow floating high above the ground with elevator pods transporting prisoners, staff, food and so forth between the prison and earth. Prisoners would work in farms to supply earth with organic products. Those who behaved well would be given cells with windows pointed to the earth so they would be motivated to reform themselves. The naivete of the design (the prison floats without support in the sky) and reform strategy (the architecture students do not appear to have researched the history of prisons) is remarkable, as is that of the judges of the competition.

A Pilot Study of a faith-based restorative justice intervention for Christian and non-Christian offenders

from the journal article by Armour, Windsor, Aguilar, and Taub in Journal of Psychology and Christianity: Restorative justice and faith-based programs are receiving increased attention as innovative ways to help change offenders' internal motivations as well as external behaviors (Rockefeller institute of Government, 2007). The purpose of the present pilot study is to examine change in offenders' pro-social responses after participation in an in-prison faith-based program that draws from the principles of restorative justice.

Correctional Service of Canada. Toward a strategic direction for chaplaincy

As this paper indicates, people of faith have contributed in significant ways in shaping criminal justice thought and developing creative responses to criminal behavior. Is it possible to chart a strategic direction for the chaplaincy branch of the Correctional Service of Canada, especially given the diversity of spiritual and religious life in society at large and the correctional system in particular? Amid this context, and with awareness of the difficulties, the Correctional Service of Canada attempts in this document to give structure and vision to the chaplaincy’s work in the correctional system. The aims are to increase the chaplaincy capacity to meet the Correctional Service’s mission, justify developmental projects, clarify objectives for chaplains and related workers, foster the Correctional Service’s ability to meet new challenges such as increased religious plurality, and enhance internal and external public relations for the chaplaincy. The document covers the mission and values of the chaplaincy, an environmental or a situation analysis, strategic issues, and appendices on mandates in chaplaincy and partnerships in chaplaincy.

International Centre for Prison Studies. "We don't waste prisoners' time and we don't waste bicycles': The impact of restorative work in prisons

In January 2000 the International Centre for Prison Studies launched the Restorative Prison Project. The aims of the project are to review the concepts that shape the use of imprisonment and to work with the Prison Service in Great Britain to explore the possibility of applying restorative principles in the prison setting. This then is a report into the activities in prisons of the Inside Out Trust, an organization that promotes the development of vital links between prisons and the community, as well the development of opportunities for prisoners to do work for the benefit of others. The research in the report deals with the ways in which prisoners and prison staff view the work of the Trust. It also covers the impact of the Trust’s work on the regime of the prisons with which it is associated.

Dinsdale, Jennifer. Restorative Justice in HM Prison Holme House: A Research Paper

The International Centre for Prison Studies initiated the Restorative Prison Project to examine the conceptual framework for imprisonment and to work with the Prison Service in Great Britain to apply restorative principles in the prison setting. One site for this work is HM Prison Holme House in northeast England. In 2001 Jennifer Dinsdale, a graduate student unaffiliated with the Restorative Prison Project, conducted research into the feasibility of restorative schemes in Holme House. She looked particularly at prisoners’ perceptions of the impact of their crimes on their victims, the openness of prisoners to engaging in reparative activities, and prisoners’ perspectives on their relationship to the community outside the prison. This paper reports her research findings.

. Restorative practices in Hungary: An ex-prisoner is reintegrated into the community.

As the representative of Community Service Foundation of Hungary, the Hungarian affiliate of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), I participated in a group session of the Hungarian Crime Prevention and Prison Mission Foundation in summer 2009 (Sycamore Tree Project — www.pfi.org/cjr/stp/introduction — or Zacchaeus Program in Hungary). There I met the governor of Balassagyarmat prison, where inmates were working in groups on issues related to their crimes and exploring ways to repair relationships they had damaged. Some inmates began accepting responsibility for what they had done and were motivated to make things right and earn forgiveness of victims and their families. Prisoners made symbolic reparation in the form of community service within the prison, but there was still a lot to do to create opportunities for offenders to make contact with victims and shed the stigma of their offense by means of direct reparation. Also, prison management believed it important to support processes,acceptable to victimized families and communities, to help prisoners regain control of their lives and prevent reoffending.(excerpt)

Vazulla, Juan Carlos. The participation of the community representative in mediation involving youth perpetrators

In Brazil, the juvenile justice system includes victim-offender mediation. Now they have added a third mediator into those meetings: one that represents the community that was transgressed against.

. "Restorative prison" projects in Hungary.

The Hungarian "restorative prison" projects has nothing to do with the procedure-oriented restorative practices. Instead, these programmes do not involve the party directly injured by the crime but offer a chance to convicts who show remorse to make amends while they serve their prison term. The inmates make reparations to the local community, which is indirectly affected by the crime (due to the violation of the law), and not to the specific and directly injured party, the victim. This means that instead of providing compensation for the specific injury they caused, the criminals improve the local community's life by producing useful and visible results.The common qualities of good practice that enable the prison to be a part of the host town's or area's life are presented below. (excerpt)

Making Victims' Voices Heard

Victims’ Voices Heard (VVH) provides victims and victim survivors of severe violence the opportunity to meet with their offenders in a facilitated encounter. Located in Delaware, it is based on a model first developed in Texas. Kim Book, programme coordinator for VVH, describes her experience with the criminal justice system and shares a victim perspective on the mediation process.