Canadian School of Peacebuilding- Day 1

Having Howard Zehr teach this course is an amazing opportunity. I used to think of him as the theoretician. But he said that it was really practice first and theory later. He also discussed being able to handle the ambiguity and paradox that goes with restorative justice. I really appreciated this because I think I have been worried with this a lot.

People and life is more gray than black and white. It is also so damaging to have the labels of victim and offender. There also seem to be more advocates for victims. Yet, the access to offender is more structured. According to many of the Canadians at the course, there seem to be more programs oriented towards the offenders because they are more accessible in this way. People also hypothesized that volunteers do not want to work with victims because it is harder emotionally. I feel that there is a stigma created against prisoners that would create fear and a hurdle towards working with this population as well. To me, it seems like there are more American programs working with victims such as the Safehouse in Boulder that works with women.

Another thought is about the layers of a crime. There are the people directly involved: victim and offender. But, there are also all of their family members. I think we tend to forget about the family members of the offenders especially. People in jail have children who are living without a parent. They have brothers and sisters.

We watched a video on the Mural Art Program in Philadelphia. This program created a mural with prisoners and victims. I was surprised when the original vision on one mural shifted to be two murals. The victims and victim advocates did not feel that the prisoners' design reflected the experience of the victims. At first, I thought that two separate murals would make for two competing view points. However, these separate murals made the similarities easier to discern. For example, in both murals, there were people raising their hands to the air as if to ask "Why?"

The victim's journey (above) and the inmate's journey (below)


Victims and Offenders are dealing with similar emotions of fear, confusion, and anger. Even using the words "victim" and "offender" is extremely problematic and works to divide people and experiences. How do you bridge these constructions of difference?