There are three ontological questions incorporated into the Violence Integrative Prevention and Restoration (PAR) Model. They are:
Who am I?
What is the nature of the world?
What is my place in that world?
The answers to these questions frame the way in which human beings operate and establish meaning and value for their existence. Meaning and value are elemental forms of power, without which being in the world makes no sense. To support the answers to the three ontological questions, we accumulated power. We incorporate healthy, benign, or unhealthy forms of power (or a combination of the three) to perpetuate our existence. Violence is an unhealthy manifestation of power.
The PAR Model is used to identify and apply approaches which enhance healthy power and which reduce or eliminate unhealthy expressions of power such as conflict and violence. Examples of healthy power include: value, meaning, honesty, accountability, creativity, excellence, cooperation, compassion, responsiveness, determination, loyalty, reliability, belonging, and integrity.
The Problem With Punishment
A common response to acts of violence is to take power away from the person committing these acts. Violence is a strategy to get power and control. One applies this strategy because they experience a loss of power (refer to the discussion on the Experienced Power Deprivation Disorder). Given that there is an experience of power deprivation, taking power away aggravates the condition.
If punishment is applied, two things happen. First the "offender" experiences further loss of power. Second, that person can adopt the role of the victim — that is, they can see punishment as something being done to them and, therefore, they are not required to own the consequences. Note that there is a big difference between punishment and negative consequences. They own consequences. They don’t own the punishment.
Power Swapping
The answer to the problem of aggravating the experience of loss of power with punishment is to, instead, replace the unhealthy power (violence) with healthy power. This is the "power swap."
Power swapping involves four steps.
The first step is to separate the behavior from the person.
The second is to take the power out of the unhealthy or destructive behavior.
The third step is to immediately replace unhealthy power with healthy power.
The fourth step is to reinforce the healthy choices.
At the core of this process is recognizing and accepting that we are human beings — not human-doings or human-havings. We are not what we do or have. By reframing violence (and its unhealthy antecedents) in a way that takes the power payoff out of violent action.
Power Infusion
Power Infusion is the continuous process of validating a person's nonviolent intention, directing their attention to their expressions of healthy power, and supporting and reinforcing their experience of healthy power. The goal is to build neural connections which become powerful, embedded circuits within the brain and which are the "go to" patterns when one moves toward expressing power.
This approach has its roots in neuroscience which has demonstrated that a person can restructure and reorganize their behaviors by altering the patterns in the brian through focused attention. This process acknowledges that, regarding synapses in the brain, "what fires together, wires together."
