59 min
Trauma Informed and Compassionate Justice w/Fritzi Horstman Via Media
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- Spirituality
Justice is a core aim of many spiritual and religious traditions, the idea that to heal a broken world requires condemning behaviors that violate the humanity of another human being. And the systems of punishment that we put in place to ensure that people are kept accountable is what we call our criminal justice system. The problem is that our attitudes towards those who commit crimes violate the other spiritual commitment, compassion. And our natural impulse towards punishment and retribution creates systems and practices that are themselves unjust creating a profoundly inhumane system that perpetuates the suffering, for those in the criminal justice system, and for society as a whole.
Fritzi Horstman is the founder and Executive Director of the Compassion Prison Project a grassroots organization whose vision is to see all prisons transformed from punitive human warehouses into rehabilitative environments. Her organization is bringing trauma informed practices, such as Adverse Childhood Experiences to the criminal justice system, and not just to those incarcerated, but also to guards and officers who themselves suffer from the trauma of their work. Fritzi is advancing a philosophy of humanity that is an exemplar of the Via Media ethic, that all people share a common humanity and we ought to move away from our punitive and retributive attitudes and embrace a redemptive, healing, and wholistic way of compassion as the way forward for our social and political systems. She is one of my heroes in the work of inspiring a curious and hopeful humanity.
Compassion Prison Project: https://compassionprisonproject.org/
Justice is a core aim of many spiritual and religious traditions, the idea that to heal a broken world requires condemning behaviors that violate the humanity of another human being. And the systems of punishment that we put in place to ensure that people are kept accountable is what we call our criminal justice system. The problem is that our attitudes towards those who commit crimes violate the other spiritual commitment, compassion. And our natural impulse towards punishment and retribution creates systems and practices that are themselves unjust creating a profoundly inhumane system that perpetuates the suffering, for those in the criminal justice system, and for society as a whole.
Fritzi Horstman is the founder and Executive Director of the Compassion Prison Project a grassroots organization whose vision is to see all prisons transformed from punitive human warehouses into rehabilitative environments. Her organization is bringing trauma informed practices, such as Adverse Childhood Experiences to the criminal justice system, and not just to those incarcerated, but also to guards and officers who themselves suffer from the trauma of their work. Fritzi is advancing a philosophy of humanity that is an exemplar of the Via Media ethic, that all people share a common humanity and we ought to move away from our punitive and retributive attitudes and embrace a redemptive, healing, and wholistic way of compassion as the way forward for our social and political systems. She is one of my heroes in the work of inspiring a curious and hopeful humanity.
Compassion Prison Project: https://compassionprisonproject.org/
59 min