Claire de Mézerville López welcomes Lorenn Walker, J.D., M.P.H., to the Restorative Works! Podcast. Lorenn speaks with us about her public health approaches to working with the criminal legal system. Through diversion, Lorenn’s work addresses criminal issues that are better dealt with using proactive approaches instead of punitive ones. She addresses how to increase resiliency and cope with pain and anxiety using healing-based approaches by willingly taking responsibility for one’s actions. People with the option to be active participants in their rehabilitation build resiliency. This is strikingly different from traditional court-system processes that are often passive and punitive.

Lorenn is a Hawai’i-based social scientist who studies how people learn, increase resiliency, and cope with trauma and social problems. Her background in education, law, public health, restorative justice, solution-focused brief therapy, and her firsthand experiences inform her approaches to issues commonly addressed by criminal legal systems. She works to serve individuals and organizations by sharing research outcomes aimed at assisting to find healthy and positive mindsets no matter the circumstances. She has a special interest in helping disenfranchised people, including but not limited to foster youth, people facing housing and financial difficulties, crime victims, incarcerated people, and those with substance disorders.

Much of Lorenn’s research and work is conducted as director of Hawai’i Friends of Restorative Justice, which she has worked with for over 20 years. For over two decades, she has been a University of Hawai’i system lecturer and has served in numerous roles as an attorney, a public speaker, and a restorative justice ambassador. She also developed an individual reentry planning process for incarcerated people and began The Forgiveness Project after her own experience with a violent crime. Since 1996, Lauren has been using a public health approach in working with the criminal legal system and assisting people facing hardships to find peace and healing.

Tune in to learn more about Lorenn’s work and perspective on responsibility, shame, and finding the courage to be optimistic while navigating hardships.