Daniela Hirt | „I have learnt to empathise without suffering too much“

Nina Zolezzi |"We need to become braver as a society" Nina Zolezzi, born in Mozambique with Italian-Portuguese roots, lives in Hamburg. As a systemic psychologist and trauma therapist, among other things, she combines neuroscientific findings with leadership expertise. After 30 years as managing director of a communications consultancy, she now works as a leadership trainer and coach. Her philanthropic commitment is focussed on trauma education and criminal justice reform, where she represents the Compassion Prison Project in Europe. This project has set itself the goal of creating trauma-informed prisons, based on the realisation that unresolved childhood trauma is often one of the causes of criminal offences. This is expressed very movingly in the short film "Step inside the circle".

Hartmut Kahle was a drug addict, offender and imprisoned. He says: "My story shows very clearly that we reduce people with prison sentences to their deviant behaviour and ascribe them the role of 'criminal' in society. To break this cycle, one thing is needed above all: acceptance, prospects and participation in the form of a new role in society." Today, he works for the Hoppenbank e.V. organisation, which addresses precisely these issues. He uses the lessons learnt from his own painful experiences to contribute to a sensible and humane approach to crime.

Christoph Willms is Head of the Service Office for Victim-Offender Mediation and Conflict Mediation of the DBH-Fachverband e.V., the German central office for the promotion of conflict mediation in criminal cases, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Justice. As a qualified social worker and criminologist, he previously worked in various prisons in North Rhine-Westphalia, among other places. He knows only too well from theory and practice that inflicting further suffering does not help anyone. Participation, communication and 'genuine' acceptance of responsibility, on the other hand, can create a framework in which mutual understanding, joint clarification and any efforts to make amends can contribute to restoring social peace. In this episode of the podcast, he explains what this can look like in practice for both minor and serious injuries.