Advanced English Reading and Comprehension

Healing circles: A gentler justice 141

13. A young girl constantly runs away from home.


14. A family has learned that their only son has been killed in a roadside bomb explosion
    while serving overseas in the army.


15. The renters of a house have a complaint against their landlord, who has threatened
    to evict them because of their noisy parties.

10 · 11

EXERCISE

Making a caseConsider the following statement by the Dalai Lama. Do you agree

or disagree with this statement? How do healing circles reect the statement? Support

your opinion with information about healing circles and restorative justice from the

reading text. Present situations or examples of how healing circles and restorative

justice are used, or could be used, in your country.

“Learning to forgive is much more useful than merely picking up a stone and throwing it at

the object of one’s anger, the more so when the provocation is extreme. For it is under the

greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself

and for others.”

Bibliography
“About the Circle Process” (Living Justice Press), http://www.livingjusticepress.org/index.asp?
Type=B_BASIC&SEC={51F9C610-C097-446A-8C60-05E8B4599FE7}.
Parker, Lynette, “Circles” (Restorative Justice Online, 2001), http://www.restorativejustice.org/
university-classroom/01introduction/tutorial-introduction-to-restorative-justice/processes/
circles/.
Pranis, Kay, he Little Book of Circle Processes: A New/Old Approach to Peacemaking (Intercourse,
PA: Good Books, 2005).
Umbreit, Mark, “Talking Circles” (Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking, University of
Minnesota, 2003).