ATS1423 Chap.10 Justice Reinvestment
Justice Reinvestment
Justice Reinvestment examines a policy idea that promises to move money out of prisons and into the communities that fill them. The Week 10 overview defines it as diverting a significant share of correctional funding into local, community-driven solutions, and warns that it is a slow strategy rather than a quick fix.
The readings trace the idea from Tucker and Cadora's three steps to the US Justice Reinvestment Initiative, which the required reading by Dollar argues was bluewashed, keeping savings inside police and community corrections. The tutorial contrasts justice-focused and community-focused reinvestment and asks students to research Australian sites such as Bourke.
The guest lecture frames the week as one of promise, an alternative to the revolving door of the prison, while being honest about how hard reinvestment is to implement and to evaluate.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The premise and aims of justice reinvestment
- 02
Tucker and Cadora's three steps
- 03
Million-dollar blocks and place-based thinking
- 04
Justice-focused and community-focused reinvestment
- 05
The US Justice Reinvestment Initiative and its results
- 06
Bluewashing and the General Fund problem
- 07
Community reinvestment and Australian sites
Worked example · free
Test a reform against the original idea of reinvestment
- 1State the original aim: Tucker and Cadora's third step reinvests savings in the public safety of high-incarceration neighbourhoods.
- 1Classify the plan: the money stays inside the criminal justice system, which the tutorial calls justice-focused reinvestment.
- 1Apply Dollar's bluewashing test: the plan communicates reform while routing resources back to justice agencies.
- 1Propose the faithful version: ring-fence savings for housing, education or employment in the communities most affected.
Key terms
- Bluewashing
- Dollar's term for agencies with poor justice performance presenting reforms as successes while routing resources back to criminal justice agencies.
- Million-dollar blocks
- City blocks on which governments spend over a million dollars imprisoning residents, mapped to show how imprisonment concentrates in a few places.
- Community reinvestment
- Dollar's proposed model in which all savings stay in a grant for the neighbourhoods sending the most people to prison.
- Technical assistance
- In the US initiative, spending on risk tools, staff and streamlined workflows inside justice agencies rather than in communities.
- Justice reinvestment
- A policy of diverting correctional funding into the communities that send the most people to prison, to address the causes of offending locally.
Justice Reinvestment FAQ
What are the three steps of justice reinvestment?
Tucker and Cadora describe identifying unproductive spending in corrections budgets, setting aside and protecting a portion of those funds, and reinvesting the money in the public safety of high-incarceration neighbourhoods.
Did the US Justice Reinvestment Initiative work?
Dollar reports that the 28 participating states all expanded community supervision but none legally earmarked funds for health, education, housing or jobs, and that total savings by 2014 were only $165 million, far below what was promised.
Where has justice reinvestment been tried in Australia?
The tutorial names Bourke (Maranguka), Halls Creek (Olabud Doogethu) and Port Adelaide (Tirrapendi Wodli), and Battams and colleagues identify Maranguka in New South Wales as the first Australian project.
Why does Dollar say justice reinvestment savings were hard to track?
Most savings under the US initiative went into state general revenue, where they could not be traced or evaluated and could return to criminal justice agencies through ordinary budget increases, so reinvestment in communities could not be shown to have happened.
Why is justice reinvestment called a slow strategy?
The overview explains that it targets entrenched drivers of offending such as disadvantage, so results take years to appear. Dollar's own model expects returns over one to ten years rather than immediately.
What is the difference between justice-focused and community-focused reinvestment?
Justice-focused reinvestment moves money into community corrections and shorter sentences, with very mixed results in the United States and United Kingdom. Community-focused reinvestment funds community strengths to reduce the need for crime, with promising early results in Australia.
Assessment move
Memorise the three steps and the justice-focused versus community-focused distinction, then practise testing a described reform by asking where its money ends up. Read Dollar for the bluewashing argument and the Initiative's results. Before citing any Australian site, look up its current published evaluation, because the unit materials name the sites but do not report their outcomes.
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