Regardless of justification, it is commonplace throughout the U.S. criminal justice system as in everyday life to teach our offenders and children alike that wrong actions “have consequences,” namely, those authority figures promise to impose upon them. We do so in the name of holding people responsible for their actions, or in legal parlance in civil law, holding them accountable or liable. I noticed that in Norwegian, responsibility, accountability and liability translate into one word, ansvar, which I have translated from Germanic to Latin roots as “responsiveness.” In practice, the state of being responsive to others with whom one conflicts occurs when empathy moves one to recognize and accommodate the interests of others, in Roger Fisher’s terms, to shift focus from position to interests, a shift I observed as a victim-offender mediator. When we hold people responsible, we dictate rules to replace rather than invite and encourage assumption of responsibility for how ones’ actions affect others; we require obedience in place of building capacity for self-control. In legal terms, we adjudicate rather than mediate our differences. I turn from the paradox to identifying ways in which responsibility is also engendered rather than taken in our relations, inside and outside the criminal justice system, in our daily lives. I seek to recognize and encourage transition in our political culture from control by power over others to control by sharing power with others, in moments of conflict as in all our moments of cooperation.

This is an overview of the work of criminologists that informs how people build trust, safe and social security in the face of violent social differences. The article begins with a story of how the term “peacemaking” came to “criminology.” A theory of peacemaking emerging from this beginning is then stated, including a review of criminological literature that informs the theory. The theory is grounded in a paradigmatic departure from criminology’s tradition—the study of crime and criminality—to proposing instead of studying what replaces human separation with cooperation and mutual trust. This paradigm implies that stories of dispute handling are its most authoritative data, especially stories people tell about their own relations. It also implies new ways of evaluating the fruits of adopting a peacemaking paradigm for learning and living.

"Responding to needs: a personal and professional tribute." Contemporary Justice Review, 15(2), p. 203

My overarching objective for this class is to create an environment in which each and every one of us gains significant control of her or his own relations. That could include coming out of class with new choices you can make, for instance, to give and receive respect, as on police patrol with civilians, as offenders to victims, as parent with a child, as a partner or friend, or as a national government with one’s own people and internationally. In the process, I hope you also get a clearer sense of where you might most want to contribute to social control—develop your own sense of where social control is most immediate to you or matters most to you.

This is a story of a U.S. Midwest college town's movements to build bigger and better jails. It is a story of losing resistance to building a jail in 1986 to broadening resistance to a newer and bigger "justice campus,'' which has stalled. It emerges that the biggest contributor to current jail population is non-bailable revocation of suspended sentences on technicalities that do not in themselves constitute crimes.

Step by step, slowly and patiently, some are building micro-utopias, as when, for example, children are helped in a remarkable classroom to learn to make peace by practicing peacemaking in their education. We can employ this upbeat case to help re-assess our own approach to teaching. We can also share it with students as a benchmark against which they can measure all of their educational experiences: Only as every classroom becomes a lesson in peacemaking can that utopian cause hope to make steady, deep, and far-reaching progress.

My utopia, my heaven on earth, is a way of relating to people that I call peacemaking. Here I survey the basic elements, as I have found them, of putting peacemaking into practice in a large criminal justice class on ‘alternative social control systems,’ in which I offer peacemaking as an overriding alternative to retributive justice.

This article explores effects that getting toknow those involved in child custody strugglesover allegations of sexual abuse, and survivorsof ritual abuse and mind control (RA/MC), havehad on the development of my own theory of howto make peace in the face of violence on theone hand and on how I am receivedprofessionally on the other. The discussionprovides background of how I came to beinvolved with these survivors and why I inferthat I am considered deviant for listening tothem while other criminologists focus ongenerating ``knowledge'' based on people theyhardly know. I conclude by reflecting on someinsights for peacemaking criminology gainedfrom RA/MC survivors who have built trusting,trustworthy lives with partners and friends,and who offer lessons on what it takes to moveaway from sadism and toward compassion – totransform a culture into greater community andless violence.

This article suggests that society can reduce drug-related harms by encouraging responsible, healthy drug use. To this end, drug users themselves should be included in conversations about drugs. Though drug users have historically developed and disseminated norms and traditions that have helped people control their drug use, their voices have generally been excluded from the dominant discourse on drugs. Often, they are relegated to the status of objects to be studied, cured, or punished. This results from the war making approach to drugs, characterized by attempts to eliminate certain drugs identified by authorities as dangerous. Instead, peacemaking theory suggests that responsible drug use can be encouraged through open conversations that include everyone willing to share.

Here I reflect on my career as a criminologist, focusing on a failed attempt to become recognized as a legitimate sociologist, and on how I have found community in the company of members of the Association for Humanist Sociology.

The author reviews the course of his criminological research, which began with the study of how police decide whether to record offenses. His research on crime measurement has ultimately led him to give up trying to measure trends in crime and criminality. In its place, he proposes a paradigm in which criminologists study how to democratize participation in social life, arguing that this is a more valid way to measure progress toward control of crime and personal violence.

This is an elaboration of a theory of how to make peace instead of making war on crime and personal violence. From a warmaking perspective safety from crime and personal violence lies essentially in making individuals obedient to commands from the proper authorities. From a peacemaking perspective as proposed here, safety from personal violence lies essentially in building empathy rather than in commanding obedience. Signs of obedience like remorse are inherently unreliable indicators that people are safe company. When it comes to safety from personal violence, empathy works, obedience doesn't.

I began giving attention to the art and science of peacemaking in the mid‐1980s. The groundwork for my understanding of how to create safety with one another in the face of violence (as I now operationalize peacemaking) was laid more than a decade earlier, when I met and married Jill Bystydzienski, now an internationally recognized feminist scholar. She rapidly confronted me on my male‐biased choice of pronouns in my writing, arousing my childhood dread of having my English corrected, but I could not deny her point: There was no linguistic need for me to perpetuate a use of language that excluded an already excluded demographic category of people.

We are in another peak of a continuing war on youth. Our retributive justice system rests fundamentally on warring against youth. Adult power over others includes adult power over youth which is our primary source of violence. We have a growing stake in de‐escalating our war against youth. There are several ways in which we appear to be making peace with children more than we have, even in the midst of apparent mobilization against them. Insofar as we make peace with children, we adults also make peace with ourselves, and foster creative adaptation to changing human circumstances.