Justice Reinvestment
Definition
A policy strategy that proposes redirecting funds spent on incarceration toward community-based services, education, mental health treatment, and substance use programmes in the areas with the highest rates of imprisonment. The argument is that investing upstream reduces both crime and incarceration more cost-effectively than continuing to build prisons.
- Focus
- Redirecting incarceration spending to community services
- Target areas
- Communities with the highest incarceration rates
- Goal
- Reduce crime and incarceration together
Common questions
How does justice reinvestment differ from ordinary sentencing reform?+
Sentencing reform changes who is imprisoned and for how long, while justice reinvestment specifically ties savings from reduced incarceration to funding for upstream prevention and treatment services in the affected communities.
What is a common criticism of justice reinvestment programmes?+
That projected savings from reduced incarceration are sometimes overestimated or not fully realised, leaving the reinvestment side of the plan underfunded relative to what was promised.
Related terms
- Collateral Consequences
- The legal and social penalties that attach to a criminal conviction beyond the sentence itself, including loss of voting rights, ineligibility for...
- Mandatory Minimum Sentence
- A legislatively fixed minimum period of imprisonment that a judge must impose upon conviction for specified offences, regardless of individual circumstances. Mandatory...
- Mass Incarceration
- The large-scale increase in the use of imprisonment, producing incarceration rates far above historical and international norms. Most closely associated with the...
- Recidivism
- The tendency of a person who has been convicted of a crime to reoffend. Measured differently across jurisdictions: by reconviction, by reincarceration,...
- Sentencing Guidelines
- Structured frameworks that recommend or mandate sentence ranges based on the severity of the offence and the offender's criminal history. They aim...