Why is it so difficult to effect change in correctional practices?
As the previous blog posts indicated, the research is in and it’s pretty clear. Resources should be prioritized to the higher risk populations; programming should be targeted to address individual risks and needs; lower risk populations should be supervised with less intensity; mixing high and low risk populations in community-based programs or prison facilities is bad, bad, bad. [Read more…]
The first two employment posts focused on how to improve outcomes for reintegrating people once they were in the community. For this post, I’d like to focus on what should be happening on the inside. This is a graphic story… [Read more…]
I have often felt that any law that bears the name of a victim of crime is probably bad public policy. I suspect that this informal rule of thumb can be broadened to include any legislation that is written out of either fear or anger. [Read more…]
As part of the groundwork for an upcoming proposal, I am researching existing restorative justice practices in prison. So far, I’ve read about two broad ‘types’ of restorative prison initiatives: the first carves out certain areas of prison life–such as violations of prison rules–for the introduction of restorative values and processes; while the second ‘type’ focuses on repairing the offenders’ relationships with the affected community or victims. In my research, however, I have yet to come across a living example of a fully restorative prison. [Read more…]