Peace Behind the Wire: A Nonviolent Resolution

by Kit Cummings

On January 18, 2011, twelve prisoners signed a solemn pledge and set out to see if they could live in peace with the men inside Georgia’s most dangerous maximum security prison. It was a simple but powerful for forty days they would follow the example of iconic peacemakers and commit themselves to timeless, nonviolent principles. PEACE BEHIND THE A NONVIOLENT RESOLUTION chronicles the Power of Peace Project’s story as it grew to include prisons, schools, and churches across the United States, even planting seeds of peace inside prisons in South Africa, Mexico, Honduras, and Ukraine. With those initial signatures, POPP was officially born, and its founder, Kit Cummings, began the journey of bringing peace to those most removed from it. PEACE BEHIND THE WIRE is the fascinating true story of this unlikely band of brothers, and the movement they inspired-one that has become a Teen Peace Phenomenon. Author Kit Cummings’s stunning new book asks a simple Are you ready for PEACE? *Benjamin Franklin Digital Award Silver Honoree *Winner, 2016 Georgia Author of the Year Honorable Mention for Memoir/Autobiography

200 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2015

Reviews

[Alan Mills · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clearly the author has devoted a large part of his life to transforming the lives of those behind bars--and anyone who cares about and works with the men that the rest of us would prefer to forget must be commended. I was given a copy of this book--which details his journey bringing his Peace Project into prisons--for free, in exchange for an honest review.

Sadly, I can not give this book a good review. I feel that the entire book, and the Peace Project it documents, is based on a false premise. It presumes that the trouble with prisons is that they are filled with bad people who make bad decisions, and that if only prisoners committed to live peacefully, their lives would improve. The author travels from prison to prison teaching this gospel of peace, persuading leaders to adopt the 40 days of peace pledge--and their lives DO get better....for a while. But in the very first prison where this program was implimented--in Georgia--the peace was quickly broken, and the world of violence returned. As best I can tell, this is the pattern in each case study detailed in this book: prisoners commit to peace, their lives improve, the author moves on, and the program slowly (or dramatically) dissolves.

Why? Because we have known for forty years that the problem with prisons is NOT that they are full of bad people who make bad choices. The Stanford Prison Experiment documented that the reverse is true. It took a RANDOMLY selected set of students and turned them into "prisoners" and another RANDOM set of students into guards. And it quickly devolved into exactly the sort of violent, abusive place we see in "real" prison. The lesson: it is not the people that make prison violent, it is the prison that makes the people violent.

Without a change in the culture and structure of prison systems, all the "Peace Programs" in the world will not make prison a non-violent, supportive place. We need to restructure the institution, not those kept there.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it

I couldn't stop reading this book, is amazing story he's an amazing human for changing the world, wanting to make it a better place for our next-generation.