Restorative Justice in the Prison Setting
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
IN THE PRISON SETTING
Dr Andrew Coyle
International Centre for Prison Studies
King’s College
University of London
United Kingdom
A Paper presented at the conference of the
International Prison Chaplains Association (Europe)
Driebergen
The Netherlands
13 May 2001
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN THE PRISON SETTING
Dr Andrew Coyle
International Centre for Prison Studies
King’s College
University of London
United Kingdom
A Personal Context
I would like to begin by thanking you warmly for inviting me to join you today. I have watched with great interest and admiration the growth of the International Prison Chaplains’ Association since its birth in 1985 and the parallel expansion of its European regional section since 1988. I have, of course, had the pleasure of knowing and working with quite a number of you over the years. May I say in passing that in preparation for this presentation I visited your website and was most impressed by the extent of your activities and the manner in which they are displayed on the website in so many languages. Many congratulations.
I have been asked to talk this morning about the extent to which the principles of restorative justice might be applied in the prison setting. Before I do so, I would like to say a little about my experience of prisons in the present and in the past.
For 24 years I worked as a prison governor in Scotland and in England. During those years I saw the best and the worst of human behaviour in respect of how men could treat each other. Let me tell you very briefly about two of the prisons in which I worked. In Scotland in the late 1980s Peterhead Prison held those prisoners who had been assessed as the most disruptive and dangerous in the Scottish prison system. All of them had been involved in riots, in taking hostages or in escape attempts. When I went there as Governor in 1988
IN THE PRISON SETTING
Dr Andrew Coyle
International Centre for Prison Studies
King’s College
University of London
United Kingdom
A Paper presented at the conference of the
International Prison Chaplains Association (Europe)
Driebergen
The Netherlands
13 May 2001
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN THE PRISON SETTING
Dr Andrew Coyle
International Centre for Prison Studies
King’s College
University of London
United Kingdom
A Personal Context
I would like to begin by thanking you warmly for inviting me to join you today. I have watched with great interest and admiration the growth of the International Prison Chaplains’ Association since its birth in 1985 and the parallel expansion of its European regional section since 1988. I have, of course, had the pleasure of knowing and working with quite a number of you over the years. May I say in passing that in preparation for this presentation I visited your website and was most impressed by the extent of your activities and the manner in which they are displayed on the website in so many languages. Many congratulations.
I have been asked to talk this morning about the extent to which the principles of restorative justice might be applied in the prison setting. Before I do so, I would like to say a little about my experience of prisons in the present and in the past.
For 24 years I worked as a prison governor in Scotland and in England. During those years I saw the best and the worst of human behaviour in respect of how men could treat each other. Let me tell you very briefly about two of the prisons in which I worked. In Scotland in the late 1980s Peterhead Prison held those prisoners who had been assessed as the most disruptive and dangerous in the Scottish prison system. All of them had been involved in riots, in taking hostages or in escape attempts. When I went there as Governor in 1988