The Community Restorative Justice Hubs, a partner of the Institute on Public Safety and Social Justice at Adler University, recently launched a public awareness campaign to share how investing in restorative justice can improve the health and well-being of communities.
A collective of community organizations and thought partners, the Community Restorative Justice Hubs, offer trauma-informed alternatives to detention for youth and emerging adults in some of the most criminalized communities in Chicago. The Institute on Public Safety and Social Justice serves as the evaluator and data coordinator and provides training and technical assistance to the collective.
The Restorative Justice Works campaign highlights how restorative justice is an alternative to resolving crime and conflict through mass incarceration. It was recently featured across Chicago news outlets: WTTW News, WBBM Radio, and the Chicago Defender.
“Systemic racism has criminalized and victimized generations of Black and Brown communities causing poverty and inequities that lead to crime and violence,” said Joshua Brooks, Restorative Justice Hubs Coordinator at Adler University, in the WTTW News article, “New Campaign Aims to Raise Awareness of Restorative Justice.” “Our campaign promotes restorative justice, a practice of building caring community connections that repair harm and conflict, promote holistic healing and expand human potential.”
Brooks and Elena Quintana, Ph.D., Executive Director for the Institute on Public Safety and Social Justice, shared the benefits of restorative justice and investing in communities in the Chicago Defender article, “Restorative Justice: How RJ Hubs are Helping Reduce Crime and Mass Incarceration.”
“If you think of a community as a beautiful tapestry, you don’t strengthen it by pulling out the fibers and throwing it away…we need the types of support and intervention that promote human preservation instead of curtailing it,” Quintana said in the article.
Brooks and Quintana also discussed how restorative justice is part of the solution to reducing violence and ending mass incarceration on WBBM News radio’s “At Issue.” Listen to the interview.