Porticus’s Criminal Justice Challenge aims to shift mainstream prison paradigms with launch of new US Programme

Photo caption: Prison guard examines landscape in APAC prison

The first few months of 2023 have seen Porticus advancing its Criminal Justice Challenge, an ambitious strategy that aims to transform mainstream models of incarceration by reducing harm, asserting human dignity, and positioning people behind bars for a thriving life after their release.

The new programme, Justice Reinvented, joins two others in the portfolio (Rescaled in Belgium and APACs in Brazil) that foster new forms of incarceration that are more humane, integrated with the outside community, and offer more opportunities towards reintegration. Justice Reinvented was approved in December. The United States-based programme is particularly significant as the US is the world's largest incarcerator, with around 2 million people currently held in its prisons and jails.

The overarching strategy of the Criminal Justice Challenge is to create a paradigm shift in the way people are incarcerated, moving away from dehumanization and toward human dignity. It aims to strengthen, promote and share evidence around innovative, efficient and more humane models of deprivation of liberty. It also aims to accelerate access to human rights, supporting formerly incarcerated people move toward a life free of poverty and repeat criminalisation after release.

A central tenet of the Criminal Justice Challenge is the inclusion of community life within the incarceration system, which is seen as integral to uplifting human dignity and improving outcomes. Community services that reach beyond prison walls give people access to a variety of skills and relationships that can help prepare them better for community life at liberty.

In Belgium, the programme fosters the implementation of small-scale detention homes in the centre of the community, giving incarcerated people access to community life. While in Brazil, APAC facilities aim to demonstrate a model prison system without corrections officers, where incarcerated people benefit from increased autonomy, access to extraordinary services and work opportunities, as well as relationships with the outside community.

The Criminal Justice Challenge also identifies which stakeholders are best equipped to facilitate the goal of transforming prison environments into places of growth, healing and proactive community integration. It supports pathways that enable community-based organizations to provide and lead the development of uplifting in-prison services. The Challenge holds criminal justice systems accountable for improving policies for people upon release while empowering formerly incarcerated people to participate building bridges between life in and out of prison.

Investment in the growth of incarcerated people, and the solidarity that community-based organizations deliver, can mean increased access to supportive housing, improved family ties, expedient employment opportunities, a deepened spiritual life, access to leadership roles and improved healthcare. These benefits become more significant when taking into consideration the needs of vulnerable groups and the discrimination and social exclusion they often experience. The reintegration of formerly incarcerated people is not just beneficial for the individual – it also contributes towards the development of their community.

Nelson Mandela said: “Reducing prison populations as a priority needs to go hand-in-hand with improving prison conditions globally.” This expresses the pragmatic view that inspires Porticus’ strategy, centred on helping people do well within and after prison release, for however long prisons continue to exist. That strategy is furthered by fostering humane prison models and promoting critical enablers for successful re-entry into society.

 

 

US launches Justice Reinvented

As part of Porticus’ Criminal Justice Challenge, funding for the US-based programme Justice Reinvented was recently approved.

This follows a complex process of programme development across 2022, which focused especially on the issue of racial bias in the system. As it stands today, one in three black males in the United States will be incarcerated in their lifetime. Additionally, with nearly half of people returning to prison within five years of release, the United States is caught in an expensive and destructive system of punishment with no meaningful public safety pay-out.

For decades, US carceral agencies (jails, prisons, probation, and parole services) have demanded substantial and growing investments despite evidence of harm and a failure to promote public safety and health, especially in black communities, other communities of colour and low-income communities.

Porticus’s goal of meaningful participation invited the creation of a programme capable of shifting power into the hands of people who have been marginalized and disparately impacted by incarceration. Justice Reinvented therefore positions people with lived experience as essential players, moving away from a conventional top-down approach, which often serves to replicate traditional punitive thinking. This coordinated approach empowers those who understand incarceration best to drive innovative and impactful solutions, while disrupting the cycle of exclusion, harm and dehumanization.

Throughout the six month collaborative process, Porticus also worked with community-based organizations, bringing partners in early to help develop the programme strategy. By doing so, these organisations could envision then set up a wide range of services with the potential to improve life for in and out of prison. These services span topics such as: gardening, restorative justice, spirituality, public speaking, vocational training, writing, and more. All these strategies build on Porticus’s existing advocacy work, which seeks to improve the lives of people in prison via improved access to services and budget reform.

In California, Justice Reinvented will focus on building traction where advocates and government officials have expressed a commitment to pursue a system based on the “Norway model” of prisons. Porticus will empower community-based organizations to lead California toward transformative  reform that embodies the humanity and access to community life that is central to the Norway model. Speaking from personal experience of incarceration, one participant in the programme development process stated:

“I think the Norwegian system is orders of magnitude better than what we have in the US, but I don't see any reason why we couldn't make ours just as good, or maybe even better, in the sense that it could involve people who have lived experience and who can make informed decisions…

…so many times people get out and they're so damaged by what they've just gone through. That’s one of the hardest things: do I deserve to be out here? Am I really a full human? I'm not sure if I can really talk to people because there’s a thing that's just drilled into you every single day: you're not a human, you're not human, you're not a human.

The best part of the Norwegian model is they tell people from the day they get there: you're part of our community. We care about you.”