.
Petitions to the American Psychological Association and each state's association - through grass roots efforts of their public education and legislative advocacy positions to interrupt the pattern of the US society giving over power of authoritarianism that harms people and putting increased compassion, trauma-informed procedures, child development/emotional impact, and behavior-change in a more primary role.
Public Health
Medical Associations
Education/Human services
LOOK UPSTREAM OF THE ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES - more social responsibility for helping people overcome the factors that often lead to desperation which results in criminal behavior in the first place. And securing societal support for rerouting those factors. - public health on the basis of social justice as an important foundation for revising the entire system - including the goal of ending mass incarceration.
More tribal wisdom structures of councils and elders and mentoring than current broken system that is just punitive, judgmental, and perpetuates dehumanizing people post-conviction/incarceration
If Supervised Release wasn't intended to be so extended for the majority of people...then why is it done this way. What's the benefit? What's the harm - is the research looking at the harm?
The justification given is that people on probation deserve imposed limits on their freedom even after prison time has been served.
The decision-making capacity is then transferred as sanctioned by the state or federal system to the probation officer who may say things like, "you made a bad decision, so now I am in charge of making decisions for you." And this is allowed to happen without any governing body that people in the system can easily go to for responsiveness to immediate needs, even concerning bodily safety, which is often far out of proportion to any crime committed by the person being limited to act in care of themselves and their family members in crucial ways.
Given that the current mentality of the justice system tends to dehumanize,
demean, and diminish the the integrity of people once convicted,
structural change to a new model that balances criminal justice with
uplifting the human potential of people in corrections will only be
possible through massive cultural and systemic reform efforts.
The Backbone of Justice Project envisions a new restorative justice model that
incorporates holistic, trauma-informed, advocacy-based, social and economic
support via establishing systemic pathways to reintegration,
versus the current system which consists basically only of reports to a
probation officer and referrals to programs
It's Time to move towards a holistic, integrative restorative justice model
founded on Principles of Change Theories to guide
visionary Prison and Probation Reformation so thoroughly that it
becomes a complete re-creation of what Justice looks like.
The Backbone of Justice is more than a Probation Reform Project,
it is a Transformational Justice Movement
asking us to reevaluate and realign not only Justice, but its socio-cultural context.
Family members of incarcerated individuals are often referred to as "hidden victims" — victims of the criminal justice system who are neither acknowledged nor given a platform to be heard. These hidden victims receive little personal support and do not benefit from the systemic societal mechanisms generally available to direct crime victims, despite their prevalence and their similarities to direct crime victims.[1]
Children whose parents are involved in the criminal justice system, in particular, face a host of challenges and difficulties: psychological strain, antisocial behavior, suspension or expulsion from school, economic hardship, and criminal activity. It is difficult to predict how a child will fare when a parent is intermittently or continually incarcerated, and research findings on these children's risk factors are mixed.
LINK:
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/hidden-consequences-impact-incarceration-dependent-children
Please consider supporting these efforts to help us make certain that the
current punitive orientation of the probation system becomes a thing of the past,
paving an emerging future for rehabilitative, regenerative, restorative modes of justice.
Copyright © 2024 by Backbone of Justice Project for Probation Reform. All Rights Reserved.