What is Justice Reinvestment?
Justice Reinvestment (JR) is an approach to reduce crime that aims to take money that would otherwise be spent on prisons and put it back into carefully targeted community services.
Check out this short film on justice reinvestment which provides a neat explanation of the benefits and features of JR.
Welcome
Welcome to the Justice Reinvestment Clearinghouse.
The Clearinghouse aims to help communities and government explore what, why and how to do justice reinvestment. The information and resources in these pages are a starting point and launching pad for communities, individuals and organisations wanting to know more about justice reinvestment and to explore new justice reinvestment projects.
What we hope to do?
Youthlaw and Smart Justice for Young People (SJ4YP) – a coalition of over 40 legal, youth, health, welfare and community organisations – are advocating for and raising awareness of how a justice reinvestment (JR) approach can be implemented in Victoria to prevent young people entering the criminal justice system by communities addressing underlying causes of offending.
We hope to:
- Raise awareness of the need to intervene early to prevent crime rather than invest at the crisis end of the system through prisons.
- Foster understanding within communities about how and why they should work within a Justice Reinvestment framework.
- Work with state and local government to shift to policies and long-term funding of programs that adopt a Justice Reinvestment approach for young people.
What are we recommending Government do?
A report by Youthlaw and SJ4YP Investing in Communities not prisons, calls on the Victorian Government to develop a 10 year crime prevention plan that adopts a justice reinvestment approach. This involves setting up a justice reinvestment fund, investing in Victorian place-based justice reinvestment pilots and providing communities with the resources and authority they need to ready themselves for a justice reinvestment approach.
