For immediate release:
Contact:
Marty Price 828-318-2178
Press Release: Local Restorative Justice Expert Marty Price Awarded Fulbright, to Lecture and Train in Argentina
Marty Price, J.D. has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialist grant to lecture in Argentina during the 2007 academic year. Patti McGill Peterson, Executive Director of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars has announced that Price had been approved for candidacy on the Fulbright Senior Specialists Roster. Peterson’s announcement came on behalf of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FSB), the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State (ECA), and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES). The Roster is a list of all approved candidates who are eligible to be matched with incoming program requests from overseas academic institutions for Fulbright Senior Specialists. Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership in their fields.
After being accepted as a Fulbright scholar, Price was immediately invited by The John F. Kennedy University of Argentina Law School in Buenos Aires, where he will teach in the PhD program on the topic of Restorative Justice, beginning in mid-April. He will also provide victim-offender dialogue training in community dispute resolution centers located in diverse provinces of Argentina. In May, Price will be the keynote speaker and trainer at an international conference on restorative justice and victim-offender mediation in Tierra del Fuego. In 2006, Price traveled to Argentina and Chile, on behalf of the U.S. Department of State’s Democracy and Human Rights International Information Program. The tour program was called, "Restorative Justice: Practices and Pitfalls - How to Make it Work."
Restorative justice is an approach to crimes and wrong-doing that emphasizes one fundamental fact: crime harms people, communities and relationships. A restorative justice inquiry poses the questions: What harm resulted from the crime? What needs to be done to 'make it right' or repair the harm? Who is responsible for the repair? How can the offender become meaningfully and personally responsible to the victim and the community, to repair the harm in whatever ways that may be possible? How can the offender be restored and reintegrated into the community?
Around the world, criminal justice systems are being redesigned to include a restorative justice approach that holds the offender accountable by facilitating and enforcing reparative agreements for restitution and many other kinds of amends. Restorative justice recognizes the need to give offenders the opportunity to right their wrongs and redeem themselves, in their own eyes and in the eyes of the community. Victims and the community are given the opportunity to take active roles in the resolution of crime. Restorative justice views our crime problem as a community matter that can never be adequately addressed by delegating the sole responsibility to police, courts and correctional systems.
“The field of restorative justice in penal matters including mediation, probation and conciliation is a priority for legal reform in Argentina,” according to Professor Pedro David, who initiated the Fulbright Scholarship request that will bring Price to Argentina in April. Price was also recommended for the grant by Vice President of the Argentine Supreme Court, The Honorable Helen Highton.
Price is leading advocate of mediation and reconciliation in the legal profession in matters as wide-ranging as divorce, business disputes and criminal law, but he is most widely known for his passion for restorative justice, as a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the movement to broaden the scope of criminal justice beyond just punishing offenders – to focus instead on healing all of the harm caused by crime – the harm caused to victims, to the community, and to the offenders themselves. He is one of approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to some 150 countries for the 2006-2007 academic year through the Fulbright Scholars Program.
Marty Price is the Director of the Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program Information and Resource Center in Asheville, NC. A graduate of Wayne State University (Detroit, MI) Law School, Price has an undergraduate degree in Social Work (also from Wayne State). He is a founder and leader in the Restorative Justice Resource Center, a project of which is the Restorative Justice Task Force of Western North Carolina. He serves as adjunct faculty at Warren Wilson College where he teaches a course on Restorative Justice in the Peace and Justice Studies Department. Price is a member of the Jubilee Community Church Gandhi Team and a member of the leadership team of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, Western North Carolina chapter. Price lives in Weaverville, NC.
Additional Information and Resources:
• More information about Marty Price: martyprice@vorp.com or 828 337 1666 or visit: www.vorp.com .
• More information about restorative justice: www.vorp.com or www.restorativejustice.info
• More information about Fulbright Scholarships: http://www.cies.org/specialists/
• More information on JFK University of Argentina: www.kennedy.edu.ar (the site is in Spanish but scroll down for an icon for English in the left column. The English site is not a full translation but contains some basic information about the university.)