Opening space for imagination about different ways we could think about criminal justice, in conversation with those who are affected most.
The US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world – our prison population makes up almost 25% of all of the world’s prisoners. This is due largely to the criminalization of black neighborhoods through the War on Drugs beginning in the 1980s. Building on a long history, stemming from US slavery and Jim Crow laws, the structure of our criminal justice system has excluded African Americans from protection, working instead to disempower and criminalize individuals while ignoring the roots of larger societal issues. As we challenge this oppression, we must reconsider not just how our criminal justice system works, but how we define justice as a society.
In line with the movement of the field of design towards transformation within a landscape of “wicked problems”, this thesis explores how designers can move from fulfilling user needs and crafting meaningful experiences towards challenging power structures and redefining mainstream society’s central values and beliefs. It asks, “What would a criminal justice system look like if it served rather than targeted underserved black neighborhoods?” Building on the important work already being done by practitioners in emerging fields of justice, the project uses speculative design to open space for new imagination and development of a different mindset around justice by youth who are impacted by the system.
Framing incremental public service design and development through the lens of these new mindsets can help us progress towards fundamental change in the way our systems and services work, aligning them with the beliefs and values of those who are most impacted.
Read further to see:
– speculative props based in restorative justice
– descriptions of the three imagined worlds
– video of young people affected by the current criminal justice system responding to the three worlds
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A series of speculative objects and three alternative worlds were developed in partnership with practitioners and young people impacted by the current criminal justice system. These are not utopian visions – each has a range of positives and negatives and has sparked rich discussion about what we want from our criminal justice system in the future.
Community Harm Ticket
One of the speculative objects, this Community Harm Ticket, is modeled after a summons ticket that you might receive from a police officer. Instead, this ticket would be distributed between peers in a community. It came from the question, In a world where restorative justice is mainstream, how would we define and involve people who have been harmed by or complicit in community issues? At the top of the New York City summons ticket, the current text reads: “The People of New York City VS.” followed by a space for the recipient’s name. In this Community Harm Ticket, the fields have been re-arranged to follow this statement with space for a community issue, so that The People are opposed to a broad social issue rather than an individual. Separate space was also added for people to write how someone is harmed by and/or responsible for the issue, to recognize that both of these things could be true at once.
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The three scenarios that followed these speculative objects were built around themes that emerged from two workshops I led with my classmate Sam Haddix, within the structure of USDAC’s Dare to Imagine event.
Speak Your Mind
The first speculative world is based on the idea that justice is about allowing protest or disagreement. During our Dare to Imagine workshops, one participant made a marijuana pipe and wrote about how he feels that “marijuana should be legal money”. Many participants drew police and wrote about how they “abuse their power”, search without probable cause, and generally do not follow the rules.
Based on this, the first scenario is a localized democracy where community crimes are handled within neighborhood public library branches. Education, participation and “cooperation” are highly valued. Every month, a community meeting at the library gathers all members of the neighborhood to discuss any issues they want to raise. Any unresolved issues are listed on the library website and community members post perspectives, collaboratively building a collection of parties for a debate. Once a debate date is set, each party elects an orator to represent them.
During the debates, the whole community comes together to listen, whether in attendance at the library itself or through the radio broadcast on their stoops. The event feels like a neighborhood celebration. Having been trained in speech since early childhood, orators are highly articulate and persuasive.
A voting radio allows all community members to participate in real time by specifically dialing in their opinion on each point made by each speaker, as they are speaking. After the event, a winner is chosen based on this input. Any funding available is distributed to the winners, who are then able to move forward with their proposal. At the end of the debate, all orators put their fists in the middle of the table and join together in singing the neighborhood anthem, symbolically putting aside their differences and agreeing to work together on the chosen path.
Equal work, equal pay
At the workshops, participants often referenced not only their frustration that economic opportunity was not available for them, but also the connection of this lack of opportunity to crime. They spoke about the stigma that ex-prisoners face upon release, making it difficult to get a job and thus reinforcing the cycle of lawlessness as they are forced to turn to illegal income. One participant drew a “man in power, greedy with the money” and the “poor people killing each other trying to get to it.”
In this world, economic opportunity is carefully managed in order to avoid crime and to promote equality. After graduating from high school, everyone is required to be matched with a job. If at any point someone becomes unemployed, the employment department provides a counselor to quickly re-match them.
Every employed person wears a citizenship band containing all of their identification and enabling access to resources. Upon becoming unemployed, people are required to turn in the necklace until they have been re-matched. Luckily, counselors have access to a live database of all jobs available and are usually able to find something new in only a few hours.
The only person you’re responsible for is yourself
In the last world, people who are breaking the rules are seen to be morally “lost”. At initial workshops with young people, participants spoke about the dangers of “somebody smoking their life away while life itself is passing you by” or “emotions erupting when arguments happen”. In this world, mental health, spirituality, community support and therapeutic reflection is valued. When someone is acting out, their family and friends are under moral obligation to help them find themselves again, often sending them to a Reflection Temple, which assigns each visitor to a mentor and helps them to build a pilgrimage through homestays with other families in the neighborhood and internships at nonprofits.
Throughout their pilgrimage, participants wear a scarf around their wrist, covered in inspirational quotes and messages from their homestay family and nonprofit internship managers. Mentors use classic meditation technique among other spiritual practices to encourage reflection.
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These three worlds were presented to the same two groups of young people at another pair of workshops. Participants described the worlds with their own experiences in mind, responded with their own opinions, and acted out scenes to show their perspective.
This video is meant to serve as a resource for practitioners in creating new programs in criminal justice, and a starting point to develop mindsets of justice based in the opinions of people who are harmed by the current system.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPhJnUSvgmM&w=688&h=387 ]