Reimagining Justice This Month highlights stories about effective responses to violence – responses that disrupt cycles of violence, heal trauma, and address structural racism.
Training Day, Trumplandia
While there are many efforts to train police officers, trainings often fail to deeply connect police to the community and their needs. EJUSA’s Police/Community Initiative is highlighted in this piece as doing just that: “The officers and community members sit together, assigned to small groups and tasked with creating poster boards they will present to the class. In magic marker, they write out recommendations for how different institutions — the police department, of course, but also social services and public schools and local leadership — can implement trauma-informed policies and practices.”
Violence victims get help to become own heroes, The Detroit News
A hospital-based trauma violence intervention program, Detroit Life is Valuable Everyday (DLIVE), believes the ideal time to approach violence victims about changing their lives is when they’re hospitalized, and thinking about how they got there. EJUSA has been working with DLIVE to grow their capacity so they can apply for federal funding to expand their program.
Jersey City panel discusses violence as a public health issue, The Jersey Journal
Panelists – including one who has attended EJUSA’s Police/Community Initiative trauma trainings – discussed trauma and the need to address the root causes of violence.
Trump Budget Would Shrink Crime Victims Fund by $1.3 Billion, The Trace
Not only does the administration want to strip money from the crime victims fund, they also want to use the fund for items not related to crime victims. EJUSA’s Shari Silberstein is quoted saying that recent increases in available funds have helped underserved victims and increased hopes of bringing racial equity and equal access to crime victims’ services.
Am I Not Human?, TED
Marlon Peterson talks about the crime he committed and the events that led up to that crime, including his own trauma that no one sought to address. “Making that fatal decision was not an unlikely proposition.” Peterson advocates for criminal justice reform that invests in and addresses healing.
The Prison System is Designed to Ignore Mental Illness, Tonic on VICE
Mental illness goes unchecked in many US prisons, with many prisons lacking services for treatment. Corrections officials do not have the training or capacity and often resort to violence, which “can traumatize already vulnerable men and women, aggravating their symptoms and making future mental health treatment more difficult.”
