Community justice is the community itself having a direct say in how we want community resources to be used to reduce crime and promote peace and safety in our community. It involves the community knowing how resources of money and people are being deployed on our behalf. How do we stand relative to other communitites in our state, our country, our world?
Do better alternatives exist to simple arrest and imprisonment? Ones that are both more economical and more effective in reducing crime and promoting community peace and safety? To what extent are we employing them?
Community justice is a counterbalancing of community resources–the good and generous nature of the people, people of faith, churches–to law enforcement to moderate against extremes of arrest and imprisonment. It involves the counteracting of systematic approaches that tend to exacerbate crime problems rather than addressing root causes that can actually lead to their diminution. It’s the engaging in services that can reduce the number of people going through the criminal justice system, and the time they spend in it once there–such as preventative education, counselling, guidance, and recovery. It includes the use of like-minded members of the legal profession who employ the craft and knowledge of their field to check excesses on the part of law enforcement. And it involves ensuring the accused have best available criminal defense no matter socioeconomic status.
Community justice means reaching out to the many available resources outside the community (such as the American Civil Liberties Union), perhaps even outside the country (such as international organizations dedicated to social justice), to get them engaged in improving the approach to law enforcement locally.
Community justice consists of applying all available community resources to influence positively the outcome of individual criminal cases. These to include letter-writing, visits (personal and pastoral) to law enforcement personnel (such as prosecutors and probation officers), appeals to media–even public protest as deemed useful and appropriate–to diredt appeals to local government officials who also have a stake in the outcome of a case.
Community justice involves community members individuals and and en masse contacting those who make the laws at the local, state, and national levels both to register concern about certain laws or punishment guidelines, but also to effect change.
Community justice means connecting the community with available resources state-wide, nation-wide, and world-wide to advance the cause of community justice here at home. No new wheel need be invented to enhance justice in our community–models already exist elsewhere waiting to be tried locally. Arguments and counter-arguments have been laid out ready for application here, it’s just a matter of finding them and making them available to us so we can become educated and aware and ready for appropriate action.
Community justice involves consideration of the contribution an individual makes to the community–personally and perofessionally, at home and at work–against the perceived benefits of having him locked up, greatly diminishing his ability to contribute. What is better for the community, locking a man up or working with him in the community?
Community justice means evaluating the benefits of an energized, paid network of police informers to the community versus the costs of living in a community where individual members are working to have others arrested and imprisoned. How troubling are echoes of darker passages of human history? To what degree does a hyperactive arrest-and-imprison mentality, based largely on accusation without proof or substantial evidence, contribute to a “snitch” culture. What can the community do about this?
Community justice involves promoting equal protection under the law without regard to race, gender, or socioeconomic class. How damaging to the community is it to have law enforcement focus largely on one gender? Should the apparent favoritism shown the other gender, in terms of presumption of innocence and lenient treatment and punishment, be also shown the other? How real are claims of racial unfairness?
Community justice consists of promoting humane and fair treatment of inmates in the local jail, many of whom will be released due to the weakness of the case against them, others of whom could be at-liberty without endangering the community necessarily (those imprisoned for failure to make proper child support payments, for example). These efforts on the part of the community must ensure the accused (and sentenced) housed in the local or regional jail receive the best care possible–relative to services provided by other jails nearby, or state or federal prisons–in terms of mail, meals, commissary, medical, visitation, recovery meetings, etc. As a community desiring humane treatment of all its members, whether imprisoned or not, these efforts are a requirement. As a community concerned that those incarcerated must return to the community one day, and that return will be aided by their period of imprisonment not having being a living experience both separated substantially from that of the community, and substantially different or more difficult.
Community justice requires the gathering and helpful presentation of related data and facts to promote sensible, well-considered discussion and action based on clearly defined hoped-for outcomes.
