The Other Inmate: Mediating Justice-Mediating Hope

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Rev. Rod Carter, Director, Restorative Justice Program, Queen's University:

Restorative justice and its many applications bring forth a name, a face and a story. It is defined as addressing the hurts and needs of the victim, addressing the hurts and needs of the offender in such a way as they and the community are healed. Come to The Other Inmate with high expectation for hope and for healing.

Reinekke Lengelle, Professor of Writing and Personal Development, University of Athabasca; Member of the National Association of Poetry Therapy & Lapidus

If you have faced tragedy or trauma or been a victim of a crime, The Other Inmate: Mediating Justice-Mediating Hope. Poetry & Workbook  can offer you a fearless opportunity to open the doors to your own healing. Van Sluytman does a remarkable job in using the poetry she wrote in response to her father being murdered -- and working with the man who murdered him -- to evoke in readers their own capacity to grieve, give voice, and therefore be transformed. From brain research we know that healing must happen on an emotional as well as cognitive level and this resource speaks to this intersection. Van Sluytman invites us to go beyond entrenched concepts of what it means to be a 'victim' or 'perpetrator' and ultimately guides us to use our own words to breakthrough the cycle of doubt and despair. 

Excerpt from the Introduction of by Margot Van Sluytman:

The Other Inmate is for victims and offenders. For the survivor in all of us. It a book for those who work with and for and through Restorative and Transformative Justice; for those who believe or wish to believe that we are all more than one label.

This book is about building relationships, about constructing bridges of new language, navigating new possibility, where this might seem most unlikely. It is as well a dance into the liminal, pushing boundaries, where we can name our seeking and our soul’s wanting, with greater clarity.

The poems and questions you will read are meant to offer you a way to blur the lines between the notions of:  them and us, by naming your pain and sorrow, and by asking new questions.

The raw personal and the vividly universal are the underlying currents of The Other Inmate