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January 5th 2007 • Printer version  From Revenge to Reconciliation:
Dead Man Walking author speaks on restorative justice
Restorative justice is the focus of a free public lecture by Sister
Helen Prejean, Roman Catholic nun and death penalty opponent, who will
visit the University of Oregon School of Law on Friday, January 26.
She
will speak on "From Revenge to Reconciliation" at 7 p.m. in Room 175 of the Knight
Law Center, 1515 Agate
Street in Eugene.
Prejean will be the guest of the new UO master's degree program in Conflict and
Dispute Resolution.
Program Director Tim Hicks said, "The death penalty is the most extreme
aspect of the retributive justice system and we study the opposite
approach.
"Restorative justice - Sister Helen is one of its best
known proponents - turns things around. Instead of blaming and
claiming innocence, offenders are encouraged to take responsibility for
their actions and try to repair the harm they have done."
Now in its second year, the master's program has attracted former
police officers, healthcare and social workers, teachers, and others
who want to include new conflict resolution approaches in their work.
Prejean is best known for her Pulitzer-prize nominated autobiographical
book, Dead Man Walking, about her relationship with a death row inmate
and his 1984 electrocution in a Louisiana prison.
The 1995 movie of the
same name starred Susan Sarandon as Prejean and Sean Penn as the
convicted kidnapper and murderer of a teenage couple.
The movie won an Oscar in 1996 for Sarandon and propelled Prejean and her cause
into national prominence.
INFO or (541) 346-3042.
-Eliza Schmidkunz
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