A conversation with Johannes Feest

A conversation with Johannes Feest[i] BP. Johannes, I am honored you have accepted to talk to me. I really appreciate this immediate openness of yours to communicate between generations and between perspectives, such as restorative justice and abolitionism, which I think might become perhaps the focus of our talk. It seems to be a disposition of your character to engage…

A conversation with Rick Kelly

A conversation with Rick Kelly[i] BP. Rick, thank you for joining me in a conversation. As a substantial part of our lives is spent in virtual platforms, I have initially ‘encountered’ you on twitter, and we sort of found ourselves amplifying each other’s voices. You know I hold my conversations with scholars and practitioners, and I am usually very curious…

A conversation with Kris Vanspauwen

A conversation with Kris Vanspauwen[i] BP. Kris, you are currently a mediator with Moderator, but carry an intense academic background and an important experience of management as director of the European Forum for Restorative Justice (EFRJ). I would like to know about all these different experiences in comparison, how does it feel to embody them all, and in which way…

A Conversation with Lode Walgrave

A Conversation with Lode Walgrave[i] BP. Lode, I arrived in Leuven after your retirement, so I had initially missed out on that vital personal contact that is necessary for the close transmission of ideas but also for ways of being. For a few years, you were for me the ‘great intellectual’ in the abstract, whose work one should read, and…

The crime of punishment

The crime of punishment In 1931, Margaret Wilson writes The Crime of Punishment, a fierce and informed critique of the whole catalogue of punishment invented by humans, a critique of man-inflicted pain on earth. An American novelist with little interest on the matter of punishment, she married in 1923 George Douglas Turner, a Scotsman who served as prison governor of…

‘Socializing’ restorative justice: Reading Judge and Punish: The penal state on trial from and for a restorative perspective

‘Socializing’ restorative justice: Reading Judge and Punish: The penal state on trial from and for a restorative perspective  In Judge and Punish: The Penal state on trial, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, makes a compelling social critique of the criminal justice system[i]. An entirely legitimate undertaking according to de Lagasnerie, given that the state (and the law) are not immutable substances which…

A Conversation with Christa Pelikan

A Conversation with Christa Pelikan[i] BP. Christa, you are one of the first friends I have made in the restorative movement, right after Nils Christie, Siri Kemeny and Ivo Aertsen. Although we talk now about friendship of course, in the beginning I had found in you rather an intellectual mother. They say that a woman has one real mother but…

A conversation with Howard Zehr

A conversation with Howard Zehr[l] BP. Howard, your work has had a major influence in the development of restorative justice, perhaps even more than what you yourself intended it to have. Would it be possible to go back in time to that first moment of encounter with the restorative spirit and ideas and tell us about it? What was your drive,…

RESTORATIVE UTOPIAS IN DYSTOPIAN TIMES?

RESTORATIVE UTOPIAS IN DYSTOPIAN TIMES? After more than 10 years of working on various aspects of restorative justice, I am embarking on a new and exciting research journey. The Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) has granted me a 3 years research grant to continue working on a project that explores in-depth the shaping of restorative justice in European penal systems and policies….