Rehabilitation and Restorative Justice Programs in Colombia: A Human Flourishing Perspective

• In Event: Exploring Moral, Spiritual, and Relational Approaches to Prison Rehabilitation

Abstract

Quasi-experimental research was conducted in Colombia to assess the effectiveness of four, faith-based offender rehabilitation programs in eight prisons and two—one faith-based and another secular—restorative justice programs operating in two communities. In the prison study, for the experimental group, a self-administered survey was utilized with program-participating prisoners at two time points -- before (pretest) and after participation (posttest), whereas the control group was created by administering the survey twice to prisoners who had not participated in any of those programs. The community study was based only on experimental groups of offenders and victims. We hypothesize that: (1) program participation will enhance rehabilitation and restoration, conceptualized in terms of self-identity (identity transformation) and human flourishing (happiness & life satisfaction, physical & mental health, meaning & purpose, character & virtue, and close social relationships) partly via increased religious involvement and (2) program-generated rehabilitation and restoration will (a) reduce the risk of interpersonal aggression among prisoners and (b) contribute to reconciliation between offenders and victims. To test these hypotheses, we will apply structural equational modeling (SEM) to analyze the survey data, while paired-samples t-tests and OLS regression will be used when the sample is too small to utilize SEM.

Authors

• Sung Joon Jang, Baylor University

• Byron Johnson, Baylor University