The Justice Center
The Justice Center exists to center families, caregivers, and individuals impacted by incarceration and prosecutorial decision-making.
We document lived experience, illuminate procedural fairness failures, and connect people to resources that support healing, stability, and family preservation.
Guided by principles of fairness, accountability, and human dignity, the Justice Center works to make visible the human cost of the criminal justice system—especially on children, parents, and caregivers—while advancing trauma-informed, family-centered approaches to reform.
Justice Center
Supporting Families & Caregivers
The effects of the justice system are not experienced in isolation. When one person enters the criminal justice system, entire families are affected. The Justice Center centers families and caregivers by addressing the real, often overlooked consequences of incarceration and legal involvement on children, parents, and those holding families together.
We focus on stability, dignity, and care — recognizing that strong families are essential to healthy communities and meaningful justice.
- Children of incarcerated parents
- Caregivers and primary parents navigating forced separation
- Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum during incarceration
- Family reunification and long-term stability
- Reducing collateral consequences to families
- Trauma-informed, family-centered support
Justice Center
Procedural Fairness & Injustice
Justice depends not only on outcomes, but on process. When legal procedures lack transparency, consistency, or informed decision-making, the consequences extend far beyond the courtroom — shaping lives, families, and futures.
This work focuses on clarifying what fair legal process should look like and brings awareness to common procedural breakdowns, identifying common warning signs when fair process may not be occuring, and grounding these concerns in research showing that these experiences are not isolated, but widespread across the justice system.
- Pressure to make decisions before information is fully available
- Unusual or unclear legal timelines
- Inconsistent treatment across similar cases
- Limited opportunity for witnesses or context to be considered
- Lack of transparency around charging and plea decisions
- Power imbalances
- Documented patterns of procedural breakdowns
Justice Center
Accountability & Lived Experience
Legal systems often measure success by outcomes alone, while overlooking the human cost of how decisions are made. Families, caregivers, and children carry the lasting effects of legal processes — even when those impacts are never formally acknowledged.
This work brings awareness to the real-life consequences of legal decisions, centers lived experience as a source of insight rather than grievance, and highlights patterns of harm that data alone often fails to capture.
This work focuses on clarifying what fair legal process should look like and brings awareness to common procedural breakdowns, identifying common warning signs when fair process may not be occuring, and grounding these concerns in research showing that these experiences are not isolated, but widespread across the justice system.
- Making invisible consequences visible in conversations about justice
- Experiences that help contextualize data and policy discussions
- Patterns of harm that are rarely captured in formal records
- Impact of legal decisions made without family context
- Health, mental health, and financial consequences of prolonged uncertainty
- The impact of legal processes on children, caregivers, and family stability
Justice Center was created to name what is often overlooked: how legal process and incarceration reshape families, caregiving, and childhood.
The Justice Center was founded in response to a simple but urgent gap: the absence of spaces that acknowledge the human cost of incarceration and legal process—especially on individuals, families, and children.
Too often, the justice system is discussed only in terms of outcomes. Far less attention is paid to how people experience the process itself: the uncertainty, pressure, delay, separation, and lasting effects on mental health, family stability, and childhood development. These impacts are real, even when cases resolve quietly or without public scrutiny. The Justice Center was created to make those experiences visible.
Grounded in lived experience and supported by research, Justice Center centers families, examines procedural fairness, and preserves personal experience with care and integrity.
