Go to Prison

prisonLast week I had the honor of joining my colleague Janine Geske on her regular journey to Green Bay Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison reminiscent of the prison in Shawshank Redemption.  The prisoners at Green Bay run the gamut of serious crimes from sexual assault to drug distribution to armed robbery to homicide.  Janine runs a three-day session on restorative justice, meeting with about twenty prisoners as part of a several-month program on the challenges and possibilities faced by these men.  She has been running this program here for years as part of our Restorative Justice Initiative, and I was so excited to finally fit this in my schedule.  Having done this trip last week and then spent the past weekend in services for Rosh Hashanah, I have had plenty of time to reflect on crime, punishment, repentence, and redemption.  In retrospect, I don’t know that I could have timed this better.  Suffice it to say, the experience was amazing. 

First, let me set the stage. 

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Recession Haggling

bazaarThis week, Time Magazine had a great article on haggling during the recession. (Thanks to Jerry Olivo for sending this along.)  Although apparently we don’t usually negotiate retail items, the recession has encouraged plenty of shoppers to dust off those negotiation skills and try to negotiate items that are typically not open for discussion. 

Think you should haggle only when buying a car or shopping in the streets of Morocco? In this recession, if you’re not bargaining for everything everywhere, you’re needlessly draining your wallet. According to the consulting firm America’s Research Group, in October, 56% of consumers said they had recently tried to negotiate at retail outlets other than car dealerships. Of those hagglers, 50% got deals. When the company repeated the survey in May, 72% of consumers said they had tried to haggle, and a stunning 80% were successful. “What you can do today is unbelievable,” says Herb Cohen, an expert dealmaker and the author of the 1980 classic You Can Negotiate Anything. “Americans may finally learn that price tags weren’t put there by the big printer in the sky.”

It sounds like a perfect time for negotiation students everywhere to test those skills and ask for what you want.  As the article notes, you might start out feeling sheepish but will end up finding the process rather exhilarating.

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Milwaukee Foreclosure Mediation Program Kickoff

With a terrific training session last week for our new volunteer attorney-mediators, I am pleased to report that the Milwaukee Foreclosure Mediation Program is moving forward.  You can link here for the website giving the background details (including generous funding by the city and state — see the announcement by the Dean here) and our training materials.  After the training, I have a better idea of how we reached this crisis (with 7500 homes in Milwaukee in foreclosure) and what options might exist for working this out. 

I don’t expect that all of these cases will magically work out (and some are absolutely ripe for litigation).  At the same time, I am optimistic that this program can help people save their homes.  We will start mediating cases soon and will be tracking not only our immediate settlement rate, but whether people are in their homes six months, twelve months, and twenty-four months down the road.

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