Divest from the Machine & Invest in Communities
CONTEXT
No amount of institutional transformation within the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office will be sufficient to heal the wounds caused by policing and incarceration, nor can (or should) the Prosecutor’s office provide the social programs our community members need to thrive. Police and prosecutors are grossly overfunded, which reflects the misguided value we place on funding institutions of social control over institutions that support our community members. It is time to divest from the criminal justice institutions and invest in our community. The Prosecutor’s Office had a total budget of over $6.5 million in 2019, not to mention the additional millions of dollars spent each year to surveil, arrest, detain, and incarcerate community members (over $70 million in Washtenaw County). Washtenaw County should make the choice to support and lift up its residents by using these funds to create community-led organizations and alternative responses to conflict and harm.
DEMANDS
Washtenaw County local and county government and institutions must:
Divest From
Youth and adult detention facilities.
Arrests and creation of criminal records.
Treatment Courts (i.e. mental health & drug) that criminalize behavior
School Resource Officers
Police as conflict mediators.
Social workers as part of the Criminal Punishment System.
Hoarding money within County services.
Making policy and practice decisions that do not acknowledge existing, long-standing structural and systemic racism and are not led by people directly impacted.
Invest In
Diversion programs that are trauma-informed, anti-racist and developmentally appropriate that also meet basic needs (housing, mental health and addiction treatment, or employment options).
Re-entry infrastructure for those exiting jail, specifically housing for youth aging out of foster care and sex offenders.
Meeting immediate needs by supporting bail funds and funds to provide legal services to people targeted for criminalization and deportation.
Community organizations currently working to: challenge criminalization; advocacy for reproductive, gender, sexual and disability justice; support children of incarcerated parents; and are led by people directly targeted by criminalization, particularly those of color.
Invest in building alternative responses to violence and harm.
Special education advocates to support Individualized Education Plans, to ensure that students with disabilities get the support they deserve.
The Prosecutor must advocate for:
The reallocation of funds from the prosecutor’s office to community-based programs that support housing, mental and physical healthcare, education, and job training to address some root causes.
The reallocation of funds from the prosecutor’s office to restorative and transformative justice programs that exist outside of the Criminal Punishment System and provide solutions for accountability, safety, and healing that involve both those who were harmed and those who did the harm.
An ordinance requiring discriminatory landlords to have to lease at least 15% to those with felony convictions.
Communications and accountability from national organizations and policy advocacy groups to local grassroots groups led by people directly impacted by criminalization.