Alternatives to imprisonment

Alternatives to imprisonment might be understood on several levels:

One way to sketch the range of alternatives people have developed for responding to violence is to divide it by shorter-term and longer-term strategies.

Shorter-term strategies include restorative justice models, which primarily work to create healing and accountability without necessarily transforming the cultural context in which harm may have occurred.

Longer-term strategies include transformative justice strategies and what some people call "justice reinvestment." Unlike some restorative justice practices, transformative justice practices are community-based and are not organized in conjunction with the state. Transformative justice responses to incidences of harm work both to create immediate accountability, intervention, and/or healing, but also prioritize transforming the cultural conditions that fostered the incident in the first place, such as by collectively working to transform the values of survivors' and aggressors' social networks. Some networks that have affinity with this approach include INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and Generation Five, which has convened a National Transformative Justice Working Group.

Broadly, "justice reinvestment" as an approach means re-evaluating social and political priorities. Rather than investing in militarization and mass imprisonment, "justice reinvestment" organizers advocate for shifting state spending priorities to things like education and healthcare.