Text Box: There I explain that I believe criminologists' most serious attention should be given over to the most seriously discredited reporters of violence. Take child abuse. In 1962, C. Henry Kempe et al. first pointed to the battered child syndrome. We have since come to recognize that the physical battering of children is far more pervasive than the “one in a million” it was assumed to be (which would leave us with about 60 cases of substantiated cases of physical abuse in the United States in a year). In much the same way, the “battered women’s” movement has taken us further down the path of recognizing violence against adult women in households. So we are making progress at validating violence we have previously denied. On the one hand, I recognize an obligation when I hear stories from people to try to sift through information to help decide what is credible about the reports I receive. On the other hand, my own theory of abating violence through democratization of daily life has emerged from listening to voices which are discredited in the social mainstream. I recognize that from the time when I tried to understand Mao Zedong’s logic of social control in China, to my longstanding practice of listening to prisoners’ complaints as convict criminologists would have us do, and now to listening to the most serious complaints from the ultimate underclass, children, the professional status of my findings has suffered from the low status of my informants. I comfort myself that the professional role I have chosen—to lend my professional status to the discredited voices I believe, is a necessary part of helping build community in the face of violence. To me, that is where peacemaking properly and practically begins. The resilience and capacity to heal, the capacity to build trustworthy relations and community among survivors of prolonged horrendous torture, has become my most profound teacher of what works for us all in trying to build peace and safety among ourselves. ON THE ROLE OF PUNISHMENT HP: I also believe that my exposure to stories of childhood victimization, and my own accompanying learning through therapy, indicate that punishment is no less damaging or traumatic than the most horrendous torture, even with no physical or illegal contact whatsoever. We try to make our children feel or behave as they should, as Alice Miller puts it for their own good, and to repress their hearts and honest feelings (Miller, 1990 [1983]). I also find abundant documentation that what I would consider in adult victims pure rape or serious sexual assault is far more common than we expect in rich and poor homes alike. This violence has even been celebrated, for instance as a rite of passage for boys in Greek city states. Like Chambliss in his latest book, I used to believe that when we jumped on the crime war bandwagon so readily, we simply overlooked how safe we are and grossly exaggerated our exposure to personal violence is (Chambliss, 1999). I now believe we jump on that bandwagon because we have been violated and threatened not so much by "the criminal element," but by those we most love and trust, which Jennifer Freyd (1996) calls "betrayal trauma." In public discourse, though, we are only allowed to let out our fear and anger at politically convenient Text Box: “enemies of the state.” It follows that we need to be able to talk about the true sources of our fear and anger, before we can be expected to let go of our public punitiveness. We need to be able to talk about our secret victimization and victimizing safely, without fear of being retaliated against. Practically speaking, I am awed by how compassionate and forgiving survivors of horrendous human violence often become as they gain validation for their victimization. What works for survivors is a model for me of what works for us all. OVERCOMING FEAR, IMPOSTOR THEORY, AND “SELF”-CONTROL FOR PEACEMAKING CRIMINOLGISTS MH: You recently won a “mentoring” award. What advice would you offer to aspiring peacemaking criminologists seeking to move the perspective forward? HP: First off, don't worry about "the perspective." Simply work on your own understanding. What I first and foremost seek from my students in my role as educator, is that students learn to think for themselves and do what they feel is right. I gauge my success in this effort by how much my students teach me, and they teach me a lot. I can't help mentioning that on the whole, I more readily share honest ideas and feelings with people labeled "deviant" than with those who claim to be straight and upright. They tend to have less to hide from me, and I tend to feel less guarded about saying the socially unapproved thing to them. In the warmaking paradigm, we are taught to focus on achieving outcomes others designate for us. To me, the place for a would-be peacemaker to focus is on where to begin to listen and respond next. MH: Much of the Peacemaking project you’ve been on involves teaching us how not to treat offenders as “subjects”—but to listen—and to get beyond viewing ourselves (i.e. criminologists) as being in need of treating offenders or victims as subjects… HP: --and this entails working through the need to treat ourselves as “subjects” of professional demands or of a “discipline.” I have no higher aspiration than that my students and readers will think for themselves and know it when it happens. I’m heartened by how many criminologists have told me that "peacemaking" gives them a place to affirm what works for themselves. REFERENCES Chambliss, William (1999). Power, Politics, and Crime. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Freyd, Jennifer J. (1996). Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Gottfredson, M. & Hirschi, T (1990). A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kempe, C. Henry, Silverman, F., Steele, B., Groegemuller, W., and Silver, H. 1962."The Battered Child Syndrome." Journal of the American Medical Association, 181, 107-112. Miller, Alice (1990 [in German 1983]). For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child- Rearing and the Roots of Violence. New York: Noonday Press. Pepinsky, Harold E. (1991). The Geometry of Violence and Democracy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.