How do I live a better life and how do I do a better job? Threshold Dialogue brought together people involved in the criminal justice system in the UK – high-repeat offenders, police officers, prison staff, local government officers and politicians, housing and employment staff and many others – to consider these questions. The common goal of all these participants was to improve resettlement of offenders and thereby reduce recidivism. This was achieved in Threshold Dialogue

At the request of the Ministry of Justice, Dialogue was used to consult with prisoners about Transforming Rehabilitation. Dialogic Research as a methodology (rather than traditional focus groups, surveys or one-on-one interviews), is designed to find the authentic voice of those who are impacted by organisational changes but are otherwise excluded from influencing the design process. Read in full The Offender Journey report to the MOJ  by Jane Ball and Peter Garrett:

Integrated Supply and Trading (IST) was a highly successful business within the BP corporation. Their culture was entrepreneurial. Staff were driven, smart and young (compared to other businesses), often working under pressure with high risk and high reward. The London office housed traders alongside mid- and back-office functions. Social, cultural and organisational differences between individuals and groups were fragmenting the culture. Though people were highly interdepend

This paper is intended as a companion to my reprinted 2018 paper (next chapter), in which I outline why the Offender Resettlement Journey (ORJ) is important, how an ORJ process works, and what we might learn about some of our underlying concepts about the arche- typal journey in practice. I believe it is a useful resource for anyone working in the criminal justice or correctional system. I wrote that paper through the lens of my own 20-year journey through my Dialogue Practit

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

This is the story of a six-month intervention that enabled the successful handover of a government-run prison in the UK to a private company in 2011. I will be describing the mobilisation phase of privatisation; it is one chapter in a longer story of the transformation of the prison in private hands, and – although I won’t be covering it in detail here – nine years later the collapse of safety and security at the same prison to the point it was returned to government manageme

We are honored to have Jane Ball as this month’s interviewee. Jane is the co-creator of several of the most innovative, dialogic processes in criminal justice. One is the Offender Resettlement Journey (ORJ). During an ORJ, an offender tells their story authentically by walking through their journey in front of an audience of 40 to 80 people, many of whom have played a significant part in their life. They re-experience their journey from arrest to court appearance, sentencing,