Home  About  In the News  Publications  Blog  Join  Donate  FDR Distinguished Public Service Award in Washington DC, April 9th, 2008. Photos by Nick Bradley. Announcements National Expo: July 11th Hyde Park Summit: August 14-17 Essay Winners Announced in The Nation On Campus Iowa Chapter Holds Forum Zach Hindin in the GW Hatchet Coverage of the Johns Hopkins Chapter Launch > More "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." — Eleanor Roosevelt    Strong Communities though Equal Justice > Roosevelt Home > Roosevelt Challenges > Strong Communities though Equal Justice By Kai H Stinchcombe Categories: Agricultural and rural policy, Justice and the justice system, Urban policy The Challenge: ensure that the criminal justice system strengthens our communities and delivers justice for all. Important Progressive: accomplishing this challenge will contribute directly and specifically to the progressive values embodied by Roosevelt's Statement of Principles Meaningful: our contribution to this challenge will produce a real change in the lives of our fellow human beings. One can imagine a world in which the challenge is solved, and such a world is better than the one we live in today. Crime is an incredibly destructive force in our communities -- particularly drug crime, with crack in the cities and meth in the countryside ravaging economies and destroying families. Unfortunately, too often the criminal justice system helps, rather than hurting, these problems. Harsh incarceration policies do not treat addiction, but they do separate parents from children, suck up budget dollars that could be spent on education or crime prevention, destroy career opportunities for incarcerated individuals, and exactly in the process of eliminating their other opportunities it gives them the cultural and social prerequisites for a life of crime. At the same time, the justice system itself is filled with injustice. The death penalty, unequal access to legal aid, judicial elections financed by those with interests before the court, unequal sentencing laws, and racial profiling, are just some of the unfairnesses within the system. For many Americans, the dominant feature of their life is being caught between widespread crime and a cruel and destructive justice system. Fixing the system so it strengthens rather than hurting communities and delivers fair justice for all would make a huge difference in the lives of these individuals, and greatly expand safety, prosperity, and opportunity in America. Innovative We're looking for policy challenges where innovation is needed: where there isn't already a clear solution or best practices, but solutions can be developed creatively. Our goal is to develop options, not to lobby or advocate for a solution that is already known or to debate among several yes or no outcomes or pre-defined policy choices. Other organizations do the important work of debating and lobbying, that's just not our place in the process. Typically if you're looking at a standard policy debate you can apply what's known as the "Roosevelt Reframe" to develop new strategies to advance shared values. So rather than "should we engage in race-based affirmative action in college admissions" to which the potential answers are "yes" and "no", you can ask "how do we make our colleges more diverse", a goal we hope is shared by those on both sides of that debate. As prison spending spirals to the point of necessatiting tax increases or squeezing out education entirely, and drugs become a rural as well as an urban issue, there is a potential new consensus about making the justice system work better for Americans. We could be a part of building and defining that consensus. Because so many of the decisions here are made at the community and state level -- prisons versus schools, treatment versus punishment, tougher sentencing versus fairer sentencing -- we are in an ideal position to make an impact. The allies Roosevelt would make by picking a below-the-radar, politically unpopular issue rather than a limelight issue like healthcare or energy would appreciate our attention much more, and it would do good things for Roosevelt to work with these populations more. We could really put this stuff on the map and make it a big issue for our generation rather than an "oh, yeah, I remember that goes on in America... well, sucks for them" type of issue. Feasible Approachable: given the level of research and discourse already available and given who else is working on the issue, college students with a range of experience levels and with varied types of expertise can contribute meaningfully to the debate and are likely to think of good ideas. We don't want something so technical only engineering majors can contribute to it, or something that is already dominated by another think tank or advocacy organization. Practical: the challenge is stated as a specific, measurable, and achievable goal, incremental progress toward which could be made by chipping away at the problem at various levels of government. The statement is not too broad or too narrow. One good way to make sure something is a good policy challenge rather than a debate or advocacy problem is to think of what sorts of innovative ideas might be produced for the 25 ideas publication series on that topic. Potential ideas include: Drug treatment - needle exchanges - partnerships with 12-step programs - sentencing reform - family support in situations of addiction Criminal fairness - death penalty stuff - legal aid - jury selection - racial profiling Prison stuff - nonviolent offenders - job training - protecting families during incarceration Anti-crime stuff - community-police partnerships - school-community-police coordination, school behavior tracking - after-school programs - anti-gang programs - how to effectively fight drug dealing when it is so lucrative Comments Robert A Nelb, Sun 22 Jul 5:24 pm PST: While I think that this is an important topic, I'm not sure about the feasibility of making real change on this issue. Also, I'm not sure whether we could generate enough enthusiasm campus-wide...   The Roosevelt Institution is a nonpartisan, nonprofit national think tank devoted to bringing students' policy ideas to the policy process. 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