{"id":102,"date":"2010-08-05T13:39:16","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T20:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/?p=102"},"modified":"2010-08-08T17:13:10","modified_gmt":"2010-08-09T00:13:10","slug":"apac-brazils-restorative-justice-prisons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/?p=102","title":{"rendered":"APAC: Brazil’s Restorative Justice Prisons"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/span>On July 5 & 6, 2010, I visited two APAC prisons <\/span>(<\/span><\/a>Associacao de Protecao e Assistencia aos Condenados in English translated as: <\/span>Association for Protection and Assistance of Convicts<\/span><\/em><\/a>)<\/span><\/a> in the city of Itauna, state of Minas Gerias, Brazil. The original APAC prison, which was in San Paulo, Brazil was reportedly the \u201cfirst contemporary prison\u201d to totally apply a faith-based approach to all parts of prison administration. <\/span>(See: \u201cPrison Religion: Faith Based reform <\/span>and the<\/span><\/em><\/a> Constitution\u201d, Sullivan, 2009, emphasis in the original, p. 247<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span>I went to Brazil to learn how restorative justice is applied there, and visited the Itauna prisons at the suggestion of Lynette Parker who works with Dan Van Ness. \u201cThis is like no other prison I\u2019ve been in. It focuses on \u2018human valorization\u2019 and has been incorporating more restorative elements over the years,\u201d she said. Dan\u2019s book, <\/span>Crime and Its Impact on Victims<\/span><\/em><\/a>, was one of the first that I read about restorative justice. His personal story of how restorative justice helped him inspired me years ago. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>I spent a night and a half a day at the APAC Itauna men\u2019s prison, and also visited the women\u2019s APAC prison across town. Both prisons house people convicted for felonies from the most serious to less serious including drug offenses. The men\u2019s prison has two rooms in the administrative wing of the prison for visitors. Even more amazing than being allowed to spend the night at a prison and eat meals with incarcerated people, is that APAC prisons have no guards, instead the people incarcerated have keys to the prison. APAC\u00a0 prisons also have a recidivism rate that is remarkably low, and<\/span> has been reported below 5%.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span>The atmosphere of the Itauna APAC prisons is different from the many others that I have visited on five different continents. While some prisons are labeled \u201ccorrectional\u201d institutions, like Hawai\u2019i state prisons, APAC prisons are truly places of rehabilitation. They are not like most prisons including the state of Hawai\u2019i, which sadly teach many people how to be better criminals through inhumane and barbaric environments (See: <\/span>The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Zimbardo, 2008<\/span><\/a>, which <\/span>I wrote a blog about: http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/?p=57<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>APAC\u2019s approach is opposite to most prisons. Instead of making the people incarcerated in them feel bad, guilty, and like failures, <\/span>APAC works to make people feel worthy, respected, and able to restore their lives. APAC gives people hope that they can contribute something to help others and that they can be of service in some way, no matter what their situation. <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span>APAC\u2019s restorative approach begins with the name it uses to refer to the people who live in these prisons. Instead of calling the people inmates or prisoners, APAC calls the<\/span> <\/span><\/a>recuperandos <\/span><\/em>because they are \u201c<\/span><\/em>people in the process of rehabilitation.\u201d<\/span><\/a> The late Insoo Kim Berg, co-founder of<\/span> solution-focused brief therapy<\/span><\/a>, would have loved this name recuperandos because she recognized the importance of language and how our labels influence behavior and our experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

APAC began in San Paulo, Brazil about 35 years ago with lawyer and serious Catholic, Dr. Mario Ottoboni who worked with others in the community that were dismayed by the prison system and its penchant for turning out criminals instead of rehabilitated people. <\/span><\/p>\n

My experience at APAC prisons has also made me more committed to using kindness and compassion rather than anger and resentment for dealing with criminal behavior and the harm that it causes. <\/span><\/p>\n

There is a lot more to be said about APAC\u2019s approach and I am working on a paper that I hope to complete by the end of the year. It will explore how some of APAC\u2019s principals might be applied without being driven by a religion. As one person who works in the Hawai\u2019i prison said basically:\u00a0 \u201cFaith-based <\/span> and spirituality can mean that we have faith in our own, and in other people’s potential to do good. It doesn’t require we be any specific religion to have faith and spirituality.” <\/span><\/p>\n

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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 \u201cfirst contemporary prison\u201d to totally apply a faith-based approach to all parts of prison administration. (See: \u201cPrison Religion: Faith Based reform and the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,12,14,17,6,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}