When violence occurs, many people are impacted. Instead of helping all of them, our nation fixates on one outcome:
Who caused harm and how do we punish them?
This narrow focus fails to meet the real needs of everyone affected.
The Person Harmed
The Community
The One Who Harmed
What does healing look like for the person who was hurt? How can the person who harmed be accountable in a meaningful way? How does the community feel safe? What caused the harm in the first place? How do we prevent it next time?
These things—safety, healing, and accountability—are all essential for everyone affected by harm.
When Justice = Punishment
Today’s justice system, anchored in retribution, makes false promises to everyone involved in an instance of harm. Survivors have an array of unmet needs that have nothing to do with punishing someone else. Over-policing and mass incarceration have devastated communities of color, making them less safe. And real accountability means taking responsibility for the harm, working with those harmed to repair it, and doing the internal work necessary to ensure that the harm isn’t repeated.
Punishment delivers none of that.
Survivors cannot heal if they don’t live in a safe place or feel like their pain is understood and reconciled. Communities cannot thrive when they are ripped apart, members locked away absorbing more harm. Those who have harmed need to heal their own trauma if they are going to change their behavior.
In reality, true justice should deliver
Safety, Healing, and Accountability
for everyone impacted by harm.
The three constituencies to harm—survivors, communities, and those who have harmed—need all three elements of true justice to endure and ultimately thrive. When we embrace this truth, we redefine what justice is.
The Missing Link:
 TraumaÂ
Trauma comes from toxic stress created by heightened fear, violence, and other severe challenges. Trauma can rewire a person’s brain and compromise education, employment, or financial stability. It can hurt physical and mental health or relationships. In some cases, trauma even leads to future acts of violence.
The impact is especially severe in communities of color, where racism, poverty, police violence, and mass incarceration leave many people trapped in a devastating cycle of trauma and harm.
Trauma Affects Everyone*
The Person Harmed
In the wake of harm, fear and loss burn intensely for the victims and their families. But more than 90% of survivors don’t receive any compensation, counseling, or other critical support.
The Community
Violence creates fear and trauma across the community. And in communities most plagued by violence, the response -- over-policing and mass incarceration – can be just as traumatizing, fueling more violence.
The One Who Harmed
People who have hurt others often experienced violence or other trauma before they committed it. Instead of offering healing then, the system waits until it’s too late and inflicts more trauma with relentless punishment.
It's Time to Reimagine Justice
EJUSA is reimagining approaches to justice that turn away from punishment, deliver equity and well-being, and lean into healing-centered means of recovery, community safety, and accountability that restores.
To get there, we must do more than oppose what exists now. We must also build the vision we want in its place.
Our Platform
Alternatives to Police and Prisons
Healing support that is accessible, culturally responsive, and repairs trauma for everyone harmed.
Violence prevention that uses proven public health strategies to reduce violence and keep communities safe.
Restorative practices that create genuine accountability and increase safety and healing.
Reducing Harm of the Existing System
Trauma-informed systems — police, prosecution, courts, correction — that work to reduce pre-existing trauma that so often plays a role when violence or harm occurs, while not causing more trauma.
Separation, when needed, should do no harm and instead should support people to heal, take accountability, and reenter society as quickly as possible.
If you want to reimagine justice with us, please join us!
"Our vision is spacious. The pursuit of racial equity, accountability that repairs, and the well-being of those impacted by the system requires collaboration.
Now is the time to band together, to amplify solutions that truly deliver safety, healing, and repair to communities that have long been denied.
This is our chance to build exactly what we want, together."
—Jamila Hodge, CEO
