According to national statistics, the U.S. incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other country, and over 75% of prisoners are rearrested within 5 years of release. From rethinking court approaches for juveniles and for addicts, to reforming prisons and inmate re-entry programs, here are six stories with promising new approaches to criminal justice. 

1. Summarize how the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (described in Prison Born) and Norway's Halden Prison are models for rethinking how prisoners should be treated and what services they should be offered.
2. Think about two types of reactions you might have had - both emotional and intellectual- to the Halden Prison article.  Are they the same, or different? For example, do you intellectually recognize that this program is having success, while feeling emotionally ambivalent (criminals should be punished, not sent to a nice facility) about it? If so, why do you think that is? What factors affect your mental and emotional responses? 
3. Compare and contrast rehabilitation and punishment, using Halden and Bedford Hills as examples on one side and a traditional prison on the other. Articulate which system you think is preferable, and why. 
4. What is the foundational assumption about compliance upon which our criminal justice system is based? What are the problems with this assumption? 
5. Define "procedural justice" and describe how it is being utilized in the Newark Municipal Court and Brownsville Youth Court described in the two stories, This Brooklyn Court … and This Simple Idea …. What strategies do they share? Where are they having similar impact, and why? 
6. Evaluate procedural justice and restorative justice.  Which system do you think is preferable, and why? Are they mutually exclusive, or can they be combined? 
7. What is the structure of Vermont's "Circles of Support and Accountability" program discussed in Community plays a role in helping ex-prisoners? What strategies does the program utilize to discourage high-risk sex offenders and violent felons from committing new crimes? 
8. Define "restorative justice" and explain how it works. Describe how it's fundamental to the Circles model.  Apply either the Circles model or the concept of restorative justice to a different situation or group of people; what would you propose? How might it work?
9. The Anchorage Wellness Court was one of the first therapeutic courts in Alaska. What is a therapeutic court, and what are its guiding principles? What are the challenges therapeutic court addresses, and how does it address them?  Could the concept of therapeutic justice be applied to different contexts? How might would that work?