On July 5 & 6, 2010, I visited two APAC prisons (Associacao de Protecao e Assistencia aos Condenados in English translated as: Association for Protection and Assistance of Convicts) in the city of Itauna, state of Minas Gerias, Brazil. The original APAC prison, which was in San Paulo, Brazil was reportedly the [...]

While in Brazil learning how it applies restorative justice in its corrections system, I met the wonderful Judge Cristiana Cordeiro.  She is young, enthusiastic, and  more interested in protecting children than she is in status and her own comfort. Once a month Judge Cordeiro travels to a prison in Rio de Janeiro to conduct hearings [...]

Randy Cohen, The Ethicist, who writes an insightful and often humorous column for the New York Times Magazine, made a good case for using restorative justice recently.  He answered a question asked by a restaurant manager if he should call the police on a server who was caught stealing.  Mr. Cohen said no!  He pointed [...]

The state of Hawai‘i’s current prison polices risk the safety of our community and waste scarce public resources.  The decision to close Kulani prison is a case in point.
Hawai‘i’s Republican governor Linda Lingle and her prison administration are closing Kulani prison, which focuses on treatment and rehabilitation.  At the same time the administration gives $50 [...]

“We simply have got to stay and keep helping the people touched by these programs,” says Barbara Tudor with passion and zeal.  When she says she is “staying” you know she means it.  She is a sturdy sixty-ish woman with curly blond short hair and clear blue eyes.  Most striking is her abundant energy, which [...]

Professor Philip Zimbardo has written an indepth and important book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.  It is based on his experience running the prison experiment in 1971 at Stanford University where randomly selected students were chosen to be prison guards and imprisoned people.  The study had to be abandoned in only [...]