EQUAL JUSTICE USA INC
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Mission Statement
Equal Justice USA is a national organization that works to transform the justice system by promoting responses to violence that break cycles of trauma. We work at the intersection of criminal justice, public health, and racial justice to elevate healing over retribution, meet the needs of survivors, advance racial equity, and build community safety.
About This Cause
Problem All of us – no matter what we look like or where we come from – want to live in communities where we can be free from violence, harm, and fear. But for too many people, this is not the reality. Both violence and our responses to it – including mass incarceration and over-policing – have severely damaged the lives of millions of people. Instead of prevention, healing, and restoration, our justice system is fixated on a paradigm of retribution – driven by fear and racism – despite overwhelming evidence that the tools of retribution have compromised safety, failed to deliver healing or accountability to survivors, and destroyed lives. The impact of this failed approach is particularly severe in low-income communities of color, where rates of violence and victimization are higher, and where trauma caused by the failures of the justice system is compounded by societal causes of trauma such as poverty and racism. This leaves many people of color trapped in a detrimental cycle of violence and incarceration that is used against them to justify both overaggressive policing and punishment on the one hand and at the same time, justice system neglect when they are harmed. These problems are centuries in the making. Shaking loose the fixation on retribution requires nothing short of a powerful, affirmative vision that can prove itself better, as well as a forceful, long-term movement to demand its implementation. This alternative offering must be both profoundly new and inspiring, while still being graspable and knowable – self-evident, even – once explained. And it must incorporate the worst-case scenarios that drive fear and revenge. This is why the solution must tackle violence from the beginning. And why it must be more than policy change – it’s time for deep work that changes hearts and minds. Trauma as a frame to transform the justice system EJUSA’s 30 years of experience with the justice system exposed us to the extensive trauma experienced across the system. Two decades of relationship building with stakeholders – including crime survivors, law enforcement, and justice-involved people and their families – have led us to an important conclusion. Trauma is everywhere and provides the best frame of analysis to understand the needs and challenges of those harmed, those who commit harm, and the professionals who work in the system. Our work with families of murder victims in particular drove home the futility of asking the current system to carry out healing and community safety in the aftermath of violence. Building on this analysis, EJUSA has found that a frame of trauma cuts through the polarizing speech that often dominates advocacy work. It opens up space to center people’s authentic, lived experiences, especially for marginalized people whose trauma is often invisible. It builds a foundation for understanding historical and community trauma, fostering dialogue instead of debate around structural racism and other oppression. By asserting that trauma is at the root of what ails the justice system, we can present a clear agenda of what needs to change. The common thread of trauma – among those both inside the system and those impacted by it – presents a roadmap for new solutions and a pathway to greater empathy and understanding. This shift is critical for true transformation that centers the healing and well-being of the most over-criminalized communities. Our Vision: From Harm to Healing Today, our work is focused on using the frame of trauma to create a national shift in the way we discuss violence, its causes and solutions, and build public and political will for alternative healing solutions. This new paradigm of justice would include: • Proven community-based strategies that reduce violence without relying on law enforcement – to prevent violence before it occurs. • Restorative practices that create genuine accountability without incarceration. • Healing that addresses intergenerational trauma in communities of color and other communities impacted by violence and mass incarceration. • Those systems that carry out every aspect of justice should be trauma-informed – meaning that they understand and recognize trauma, they take steps to not retraumatize, and they are responsive to community needs. That includes current systems such as police or courts, and future systems. • Where safety requires some form of separation, that separation should be limited, not punitive, and should do no further harm. It should support people to take responsibility, make things right, and reenter as quickly and effectively as possible – nothing like what we call prison today. Programs across the country and across the world provide examples of this new paradigm in action – and evidence that it works. There is tremendous potential to link these programs into a national platform with the power to completely reimagine our notion of justice. The Strategy: How We Get There EJUSA believes we must build and promote this alternative, affirmative vision to replace mass incarceration and over-policing through both long-term culture and systems change and short-term harm reduction strategies that more immediately reduce harm in impacted communities. EJUSA combines organizing, communications, advocacy, policy campaigns, trauma education and training, leadership development, and capacity building to achieve maximum impact at the local level and disseminate those lessons nationally to change narratives about violence. By focusing our local work in cities that have experienced high levels of violence and/or police violence, we are able to shape national conversations about the necessity and effectiveness of community-centered alternatives. Our current areas of work include: • Expanding community-based violence reduction alternatives. Powerful programs across the country prove that public health approaches can reduce community violence (like shootings) without arrest or incarceration. Yet police budgets dwarf these alternatives. EJUSA advocates for building up these alternatives that can ultimately limit the scope of law enforcement and reduce incarceration. In the last few years EJUSA has supported policy change to increase investment in these programs in California and New Jersey. • Supporting healing for trauma survivors of color. Communities of color plagued by generations of harm and violence as a result of our nation’s brutal and racist history experience real pain that is often ignored. We work to fill that gap by bringing racial equity to healing resources. To date we’ve driven over $4m in federal funds towards grassroots organizations led by and serving survivors of color – funds that often otherwise go to police and prosecutors. • Reducing the scope and harm of policing. Policing is the first point of contact for those going into the justice system. EJUSA’s program, piloted in Newark, NJ, includes organizing, advocacy, and training that facilitates healing between police and residents. Our intensive training, called “From Trauma to Trust: Police/Community Collaborative Training,” is a first-of-its-kind, 16-hour trauma course that brings together cohorts of police officers and community residents to build trust, identify trauma on both sides, and together envision a more collaborative relationship. Officers in the program’s first year saw a 50% drop in civilian complaints. The program has been featured in USA Today, The Marshall Project, The Grio, The Wall Street Journal, and Salud America. • Ending the death penalty. The extremity and visibility of executions legitimizes a retribution paradigm rooted in violence against the most marginalized and traumatized among us. EJUSA works with state-based anti-death penalty campaigns to educate, organize, and change policies. To date, EJUSA’s campaigns have ended the death penalty in ten states, including Colorado and New Hampshire in 2019 and 2020. Many more states are close. • Leadership of those impacted. Intersecting with all of this work is EJUSA’s powerful network of grassroots leaders who experience trauma across the justice system: crime survivors, formerly incarcerated, families of the incarcerated, and law enforcement. EJUSA launched this Trauma and Healing Network in 2018, bringing together nearly two-dozen grassroots leaders to develop a peer network of learning and storytelling about trauma. Some of the members of our network are also leaders implementing community-centered, alternative solutions for violence reduction and services for healing that are transforming their local communities. EJUSA builds leadership to center these voices in communications, advocacy, and organizing, while supporting and amplifying their local work to make a difference in their communities. • National narrative shifting. Local advocacy generates learnings and successes as well as new voices whose stories of trauma and personal transformation have a powerful impact. Together these provide the foundation from which to shift the current false and racist narratives around violence. EJUSA has deep expertise in narrative shifting work through our death penalty campaigns, generating thousands of media stories in the last decade. We will translate this expertise into a national communications campaign to create understanding and media uptake on the links between trauma, violence, racism, mass incarceration, and over-policing. This communications work will amplify the stories and work of those most impacted by violence and the justice system, promoting a new paradigm of justice that can deliver equity, healing, safety, and restoration.