Abstract

This article introduces an in-prison restorative justice programme: the second-generation Sycamore Tree Project (STP-2). The programme brings together crime victims and unrelated offenders in a prison setting to discuss and address the harm of crime to their lives. In the first part of the article, description is given to how STP-2 has evolved in Australia from a ‘faith-based’ programme to one that is restorative. In the second part, three anthropological theories are used to provide explanation and prediction of the transformative effects of in-prison restorative justice programming on prisoners as informed by STP-2. The prisoner-participant is viewed as a ‘person’ who, in liminal conditions, is afforded agency to create a meaningful narrative that is directed to revising how one is to associate with others in morally acceptable ways. The article concludes with a comparison between STP-1 and STP-2, and some proposals for research beyond this theoretical excursion.