The Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative

The Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative (JBPC) Overview & Goals

The Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative (JBPC), is an initiative housed at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, dedicated to strengthening our movement efforts’ for narrative change around violence, punishment and incarceration. We are in a unique time of rising public awareness and activism in which popular narratives about what actually makes communities safe are changing, providing greater possibility for concrete change in policy and practice. Still, narratives about changing course on addressing violence remain marginal. Centering the leadership of directly impacted people and addressing the fundamental racism in the current narrative, the JBPC is bringing together groups in New York that have common and intersecting missions. Together, the JBPC is  working to end the reliance on punishment, criminalization, and incarceration as the primary responses to violence, to build power and solidarity around shared messages, to develop shared tools and campaigns, and to amplify our individual and collective voices to press for lasting narrative change in New York. Our objectives are to develop the narrative and thinking of those active in the movement to end mass incarceration so that together we can make an impact on the broader society’s thinking, including thinking by and about those who have committed and/or are labeled as violent, and those who have survived violence. 

The Collaborative is made up of the following organizations: The Release Aging People in Prison Campaign, The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, the Immigrant Defense Project, Girls for Gender Equity, Common Justice, Drug Policy Alliance, Color of Change, Exodus Transitional Community, H.O.L.L.A!, Center for Constitutional Rights, the Osborne Association, Community Capacity Development and the Fortune Society.

The Work of the JBPC

The JBPC engages in shared learning and research by: mapping and assessing existing messages and narrative strategies; compiling and leveraging research on effective narrative change efforts both past and present; learning together about the factors that combine to make narrative change possible, and to build from narrative change towards systemic change; and exploring differences among collaborative members and examining complicated issues

The JBPC also strengthens and supports the capacity and impact of the existing work of the organizations within the Collaborative. 

The Projects of the JBPC

Over the course of three years, the Collaborative produced resources for messaging and narrative change to serve as guides for other organizers, activists, and community members. These resources include:

1. The Problem With Punishment Podcast: The Problem With Punishment talks with a range of New Yorkers who have experienced firsthand the failure of punishment and who have found or created something better to do instead. From gun violence to child abuse to drug addiction, New York can lead the way in actually solving some of our most pressing problems. 
    
2. Freedom For All Zine: This zine came out of a JBPC working group that focused on how advocacy often creates binaries or hierarchies of worthiness. This is done in messaging, policy demands, or concessions to get bills passed. We explored how this approach can be harmful to the overall movement to end punishment and violence and further “otherize” people who are already experiencing oppression and violence from the state. 
    
3. Messages to Meet the Moment Guide: This messaging guide was developed by the the Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative and Change Consulting to advance the work of safety, dignity and belonging through research-informed best practices of social change messaging that moves people to action.
    

4. Beyond Punishment: Stories of Healing & Justice: Written and directed by Kirya Traber in collaboration with the performers, “Beyond Punishment” was a theatre production that followed the lives of four remarkable individuals who grapple with the intersections and impacts of interpersonal and state violence. This production, performed by the storytellers themselves, gives insight into their lives, leadership, and healing journeys. Together, their stories encourage us to imagine justice beyond a punitive system that begets further violence.

    

Visit the Justice Beyond Punishment website to learn more