A Whole System Approach to Justice: Creating a Brighter and Safer Future for Today’s Youth

Salzburg Global Seminar launched the Global Innovations on Youth Violence, Safety and Justice initiative on the premise that serial failures to redress social, legal, and economic injustice and structural racism underpin violence and disproportionally shape politics, policing, and judicial systems around the world. Yet bold reforms in different jurisdictions suggest that cross-cutting interventions can be cost-effective and foster more humane, inclusive, and healthier societies.

To date, Fellows participating in this initiative have looked beyond the classic justice system to identify a whole system approach as the innovation with the most potential to influence approaches to violence reduction and criminal justice reform. In this approach, policy-makers have used scientific evidence and the best available research to identify what causes violence and what interventions can stop it from spreading. Different organizations, professions, and sectors come together to support youth and to address the causes of violence holistically.

This next in-person meeting in Salzburg will focus on transferring specific knowledge about this appeoach into other countries and systems to inform new research agendas and country-appropriate strategies to pursue and implement these ideas in different jurisdictions in the United States and globally.

Date

Feb 08 - Feb 12, 2023

Session no.

S796-01

Location

Schloss Leopoldskron, Salzburg, Austria

Contact

Charles Ehrlich

Director, Peace and Justice

Kateryna Anselmi

Program Manager, Peace and Justice

Content overview

Additional info PARTICIPANTS STAFF Partners

Additional info

BACKGROUND

Policy-makers can shape services and adopt a proactive approach to youth safety, youth provision, and health, putting children first. Success would ensure children and young people are happy, healthy and safe; have strong foundations by building the best start in life, supporting and opening opportunities for them allowing them to thrive and become resilient adults through access to education and healthy communities, as well as protection from violence in their home and neighborhoods. Youth-centered approaches recognize children and young adults as the main stakeholders, either as victims or perpetrators of violence and crime. Stakeholders thus work together collectively, informed by lived experiences, so vital to understanding the issues, barriers, and solutions.

It also provides an opportunity to address violence against children in youth justice systems, the knowledge about child and adolescent development, and various additional concerns. These concerns include negative trends relating to the minimum age of criminal responsibility and the persistent use of deprivation of liberty, as well as emerging issues, such as children exploited by organized crime groups and drug traders, recruited and used by non-State armed groups, or by terrorist or violent extremist groups, and children in customary justice systems.

Central to this methodology is the intersection between research, policy, and practice; community-centered dialogue; and multi-stakeholder engagement. It intersects with opportunities for mediation, dialogue, and healing and concretely connects to models of already employed in restorative justice, lessons from transitional justice in post-conflict post-authoritarian settings, and overcoming threats from political violence and extremism. As specifics vary among jurisdictions, these different contexts can provide lessons to inform how to adapt methods applicable where Fellows involved in this initiative operate, and can represent a set of learnings that could influence reform efforts across the United States and globally.

However, understanding the research gaps and best mix of strategies to implement in different contexts requires significant further work. This in-person meeting in Salzburg will focus on transferring specific knowledge, informing new research agendas and country-appropriate strategies to pursue and implement in selected jurisdictions.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Recognizing the need for the next stages of this project to be specific and concrete, this meeting will bring in more practitioners, both those in a position to share their own experiences and those able to design new implementation strategies in their own jurisdiction. Participants will include representatives from affected stakeholder communities, in particular formerly incarcerated persons.

We welcome policy leaders and innovators to join us as we expand the initiative’s reach and impact. We would in particular seek those public officials who are in instrumental positions to implement reforms and who are seeking ideas that could be adapted for their own jurisdictions.

A strong representation from the United Kingdom, the country with the most widely developed model, will allow participants to consider how these strategies have been implemented by people of different backgrounds and experiences in that country. Then, based on work already developed during this initiative, we will add Fellows, including new participants where appropriate, from select other countries which are implementing related reforms, including from pathbreakers working in restorative justice , additional transitional justice leaders from Global South countries , innovative transformers such as from Brazil’s open prisons, and additional participants mediating in systems prone to political violence . Research questions to be applied will determine how to collect bottom-up data from impacted people and communities, and how to measure outcomes and study success.

FORMAT

This in-person program will be highly interactive and structured around a mix of thought-provoking presentations, curated conversations, informal interactions, knowledge exchange, and practical group work. The process seeks to combine theory, policy, and practice across sectoral silos, opening up new perspectives and opportunities. Participants will also work intensively in focus groups, allowing for in-depth group work on key issues.

KEY QUESTIONS

Why do we need a definition or system around violence reduction? What does a “whole system approach” mean? Is there a clearer term?
What problems are we trying to solve (i.e. best start for children, childhoods without harm, keeping communities safe, economic growth, investment in children as an investment in adults and the wider economy, levelling health inequalities, or tackling inequalities generally)?
What are the ultimate outcomes we are seeking ?
Do the languages, terms, and approaches applied all mean the same? If not, what is different? How does this help our understanding of the right framework?
Are there any financial cost benefit approaches we can take ?
What is the danger of this approach, if it is seen as “prevention” rather than form of intervention? What is the impact of violence on communities?
What policy drivers work or don’t work? Can we develop a research agenda for this approach?