Narrative accounts from the citizens,victims, and offenders restoring justice program

This paper describes the Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice (CVORJ) program, a prison-based program conducted as a pilot study at the Washington State Reformatory. The program brings together offenders and victims - though not involved in the same crime - in the company of interested community members to discuss restorative justice principles. The program focuses on the sharing of personal narratives of crime to explore how the harms resulting from crime can best be addressed and justice achieved. Of interest was how a restorative justice model that highlighted community participation could be incorporated into a correctional setting and whether healing could result from the use of surrogate offenders, victims, and community members. The restorative nature of the program, its method of operation, results from the qualitative evaluation, and key implementation challenges are presented.     

Book Review: Conflict Resolution for the Helping Professions: Negotiation,Mediation, Advocacy,Facilitation and Restorative Justice (Third Edition) by Allan Edward Barsky

The third edition of Dr. Allan Barsky's (2017) book entitled Conflict Resolution for the Helping Professions: Negotiation, Mediation, Advocacy, Facilitation and Restorative Justice is reviewed based on content, style, and relevance to the field of conflict resolution. The third edition offers an expanded exploration of conflict resolution across practice settings, making it an instructive read for diverse professionals interested in learning how to best help others resolve conflict. The scaffolding structure of the text, the problem‐solving approach embedded into the presentation of the materials, and the use of real‐life examples makes this an important source for educators and trainers in the field of conflict resolution.