JUST CITIES LAB

Nationally, we suffer from a lack of vision about how to reduce our reliance on prisons and criminalization and, more profoundly, how to replace institutions such as jails and prisons with alternatives. Those of us working toward a society that does not rely on punitive justice and prisons must begin framing prison abolition not just as an absence (of punitive justice, harsh sentences, prisons, and collateral consequences), but as a presence (of alternative mechanisms for addressing harm and resolving disputes, new forms of architecture and urban planning, and reinvestment in communities).

The Detroit Justice Center’s Just Cities Lab focuses on introducing and normalizing alternatives to punitive justice. We convene change-makers from Detroit and elsewhere who are experimenting with restorative justice and other alternatives to incarceration and policing, and implementing community reinvestment solutions through policy change.

The lab’s ultimate goal is to incubate and amplify Just City solutions that will ripple far beyond Detroit. To this end, the Just Cities Lab conducted over 20 field interviews with Restorative Justice practitioners working in the metro Detroit area across diverse contexts with various populations and issues.