Justice Reinvestment
Tools for Communities

Justice reinvestment creates safer communities by focusing on preventing crime from happening in the first place. Rather than just reacting to crime with expensive measures like policing, prosecution, and prisons, justice reinvestment works to address the root causes of criminal behaviour, such as family problems, lack of training, unemployment, addiction and poverty.

Justice reinvestment is not “another program”.

It’s a way of working that shifts power and resources to communities, to lead their own solutions.

This page has a range of tools templates and resources to help you understand what place-based, community-led justice reinvestment can look like, and help you get started.

The Journey of Justice Reinvestment

Justice Reinvestment is a journey that goes through different phases, as a community comes together to create long term change for smarter justice, healthy families, and safe communities. ​Each phase has different activities and possible outcomes, as the community learns, organises, plans, implements and reviews their Justice Reinvestment strategy.

​We use the analogy of the tree of explain the different phases. But remember, this is just a guide. Each community is unique, and the journey is never linear. JR grows organically, and has fast and slow seasons, and sometimes will do things in different orders depending on what suits the community best.

Our justice reinvestment toolkits are designed to guide you when getting started, and support you throughout your JR journey. Click on each step to learn more and access the accompanying resources.