Downsize, build, transform: An assessment of the Justice Matters workshops
The Centre is appreciative that J M Moore has carried out this assessment of participants’ responses to the workshops and toolkits we carried out as part of the Justice Matters project.
To put the assessment in context, the project was originally prompted by our thinking that criminal justice is far too big; far too costly; and far too intrusive. Far from being a means of delivering social justice, it is the cause of much social injustice, with the combined criminal justice institutions being deeply socially harmful.
By focusing on some of the consequences, participants recognised that we can start earlier on in the criminal justice process and consider other forms of reacting to those caught up in the criminal justice system.
In assessing the workshops and toolkit the overall impression was one of positivity, and it is encouraging that he reported a ‘high level of participants' association with the values, analysis and approach of Justice Matters’.
There are many formal decision makers who direct the paths of those criminalised. If we can reach educators, students, practitioners it may be possible to unpick the process and reflect on at what stage social interventions might play a diversionary role in the process.