A New Foundation for Justice, Safety, and Equity: Key Principles

Our overarching societal goals of delivering safety and wellbeing for all require securing the foundations of mental and physical health, freedom from violence, freedom of movement, housing security, food security, access to opportunity, and undistorted recognition of one’s full personhood. Society’s broad efforts to deliver safety should be measured in relation to goals such as these. Success in the above policy areas would support achievement of transformed judicial systems of civil and criminal law with smaller footprints and working in support of an inclusive vision of safety and accountability. As they currently function, so-called institutions of “public safety” often fail to deliver safety to many, including the survivors of interpersonal harm. A full treatment of a strategy to deliver safety and well-being would cover all the above topics. Here, we focus on only one component of a strategy of safety: a redefinition of “public safety” as collective safety and accountability to support transformation of policing and civil and criminal justice processes.