Writing & field notes
We name our influences plainly — and we write the work down.
Amparo’s thinking gets worked out in essays — in the project’s own newsletter, Amparo Peacemaking, and in the founder’s earlier writing at Reentry & Beyond. These are the pieces the canon draws on most directly.
Refuge and Protection
The idea hidden inside the name — why protecting a community and offering refuge to the person who caused harm are the same work.
Nobody Thinks They’re the Villain
Why nearly everyone who commits violence believes they had a reason — and why prevention has to begin exactly there.
Redemption Stories Are OK
Someone who caused terrible harm and is trying to become something else isn’t automatically lying — but there’s a right way to carry that story and a wrong way, and the difference is everything.
From the Inside: Harm Reduction in a System That Still Exists
On going inside a prison without endorsing it — reaching people where they are, while keeping faith with a different horizon.
The Prime Directive of Reentry
Holding open the possibility of change — not the certainty of it — as the single wager everything else rests on.
What Do Abolitionists Actually Want Instead of Prisons?
Abolition as presence, not absence — building the safety, healing, and belonging that make cages less necessary over time.
Can the Systems That Punish People Also Teach Them How to Rebuild?
What it means to take what is useful from correctional settings, strip the control-and-compliance logic, and rebuild on community logic.
Links open the published essays on Substack. More writing is added as the work develops.