-36 • Scaling questions: On the scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your current working conditions? You rated your current motivation as at 5. What would have to happen to make it a 6 or 7? What would it need to get you to a 9 or 10? • Hypothetical question: If you could change one thing about your typical day in prison, what would it be? • Paradoxical question: What could you do in order to worsen the situation? (This type of question allows for understanding one’s own contribution to a problem) • Solution-focused question: In which situations do you feel comfortable and safe? How do these situations differ from unsafe or violent ones? What would you need to experience more peaceful encounters? 3.4. Appreciative Inquiry – a tool for unearthing resources and potentials A particularly helpful tool is known as “Appreciative Inquiry” (AI).68 It is related to principle 8: “Looking at resources and strengths, not only deficits”. As the name implies, appreciative inquiry focuses on and unearths existing strengths, resources and potentials: on what already works well, based on the assumption that every organization/institution has something that works well. Appreciative inquiry can be used as a framework for a broader organizational change process.69 It can also be used as a very specific form of interviewing, its methodological heart, which is the focus here. The effects of this approach are at least two-fold: • It sheds light on aspects of reality which exist, but are normally not seen in the deficit-oriented culture, which is still the default mode in most societies. • The focus on positive aspects of reality helps raise motivation and enhances energy. The Cambridge criminologist Alison Liebling was the first to adapt this innovative method to a prison setting,70 other prisoner researchers 68. David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney, Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change (Berret-Koehler Publishers 2005) [hereinafter: Cooperrider/Whitney]. 69. Ibid., 15 et seq. 70. Alison Liebling, David Price and Charles Elliot, ‘Appreciative Inquiry and Relationships in Prison, Punishment and Society` (1999) 1(1) The International Journal of Penology, 71-98 [hereinafter: Liebling/Price/Elliot].