What is the purpose of the criminal justice system? Is it punishment? Or retribution? Perhaps rehabilitation? Deterrence? Public safety? While there is undoubtedly a little of all of these in practice, rehabilitation is at the heart of modern penal policy in the UK and US systems where I have worked. In my experience the reality of the aspiration to provide rehabilitation (defined as ‘the reintegration of a convicted person into society’) is hampered by the fragmentation of t

It is sometimes said that organizing church communities is like herding cats. This is meant to be funny, but there is more than a grain of truth to it. Cats cannot be pushed into formation, but they can, in fact, be herded. All we need do is put a fish on a line. In effect, we need to find what they all hunger for and hold it out there: they will come, and they will eat and be better for it. It is the same way in an effective dialogue with members of church communities who

The aim of dialogic conversations, in the sense of David Bohm’s practice, is to let the emphasis be put on the process (rather than outcomes) so that the implicit and initially unspeakable can surface in a mutual conversation (Bohm 2005, p. 36). This is exactly what the student-teacher and the children succeeded in doing in the small dialogue described above. The student-teacher broke the pattern of judgement and contradiction established between Ahmed and Fatma, and gave the