Opinion | Messengers of criminal justice

Criminal justice reform movements are built on a shared belief: the system must change so everyone can access community safety, accountability and justice.

A periodic column from Partnership for Safety and Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for public safety and criminal justice reform in Oregon.

Thankfully, many people share this value, both among the “grassroots” (community members with personal experience) and the “grasstops” (professionals with political power and influence). Because of that commonality, Oregon’s criminal justice reform movement has diverse folks at the table working toward the same goal.

It’s an inspiring partnership, but it doesn’t go far enough. For the policies we pass to have the community safety results we all want, our collaboration must go beyond just passing laws. We must also work together to implement, evaluate and update them to ensure the best possible community safety outcomes.

As it stands now, only parts of this are happening at the policymaking level. Traditional law enforcement stakeholders and grassroots advocates consult. They hear personal stories about how the system has (sometimes helped but often) failed to make their families safe. At the same time, grassroots community members learn from the grasstops about political processes and technical logistics — basically, they learn how the sausage gets made.

But that’s where the collaboration usually ends.

The grassroots then are forced to take a step back, and this creates such a big void in the reform process that we sometimes end up with a system that looks basically the same: disproportionately arresting and incarcerating people of color, people who struggle with addiction or mental illness, and unsheltered people.

It’s the status quo all over again, and it’s easy to get why. Imagine a big trench in the middle of a field, something so deep that no matter where you water the field, that gully will always flood, and the rest will stay dry. If we ever want to equitably irrigate the whole field, we would need multiple interventions to make it happen.

The criminal justice system is the same. No matter what policies we pass, there are deep grooves of inequity, and those adverse outcomes keep hurting the same communities.

However, collaboration is one way to improve outcomes for all of us, and one model example is how we’re working together to implement Senate Bill 581.

Senate Bill 581 is a law passed in 2023 that allows qualifying people on parole and probation to access “earned discharge” or early termination of probation by up to 50% if they meet goals related to restitution and anti-recidivism. It shifts parole and probation from primarily punitive to something that inspires people to succeed, building stable, healthy and productive lives.

The status quo approach to implementing earned discharge is to have parole officers, or POs, introduce people to the program — but they’re not always the right messengers. Power dynamics exist between POs and folks under supervision, and centuries of mistrust have existed between the people working in the criminal system and those imprisoned by it.

However, when grassroots advocates inform people about earned discharge, they are more inspired to pursue it, improving their outcomes.

Directly impacted people, mentors and staff from community-based organizations are trusted community members who share information in ways that people may be more open to.

For instance, folks from the Transforming Justice Coalitions have organized workshops to get this information to the community members who need it, who can then educate more people and advocate for success one relationship at a time.

Thanks to the grassroots, word is spreading. It’s reaching Oregonians who are currently incarcerated, including at the very beginning of a person’s incarceration (such as at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, which has made it part of the intake process) and again six months before being released.

When the education and empowerment process gets out there the way it needs to, POs also benefit. The longer the program runs, the more POs can focus on clients and caseloads that need more supervision.

We’re hearing folks say they are learning to assert themselves positively in ways they never thought possible. They’re working with their PO to alleviate barriers in their lives that limit their success. Trust is being built, and the harm being repaired is greater than the investment.

Think about it: After all the effort to identify a problem, develop a legislative solution, and work together to pass it, why stop collaborating after a bill becomes law?

This collaborative work between the grassroots and grasstops shouldn’t be an outlier. The risks for further entrenching systemic bias and racism are too significant.

We must continue collaborating as the laws are implemented, evaluated, and updated. By integrating the grassroots into the implementation of public safety reforms, we can support these reforms in doing what they’re supposed to: improving community safety, creating opportunities for healing and strengthening families. This needs to be the new status quo.

Babak Zolfaghari-Azar is senior policy manager at Partnership for Safety and Justice, a statewide nonprofit advocating for accountability, racial equity and healing in the public safety and criminal justice systems. He has been engaged in criminal justice policy work and has served justice-involved youth and families for over a dozen years.

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This article appears in January 22, 2025.