Building Bridges: A Restorative Journey at Green Bay Prison Wisconsin

Abstract

This article describes the pillars, values and principles of Restorative Justice and the essential components of restorative circles. A specific, circle based, restorative programme that has been running in Green Bay Prison, Wisconsin for over 14 years is described and evaluated in the context of restorative processes. The programme demonstrates that when certain conditions are met, even in a prison context where access to wider community is severely limited, that restorative processes can be highly effective and have long term consequences. An increased use of circle work and surrogate victim and offender restorative processes is recommended with certain provisos.