Impact Justice

Impact Justice promotes “restorative justice” policies under which prosecutors send cases to community-based organizations instead of filing criminal charges against those accused of crimes. ³ Those organizations have face-to-face meetings between the victim and the person accused of the crime and come to a “consensus-based” resolution where the accused agrees to “making things as right as possible” and the case is closed with no criminal charges being filed. ³ Sia Henry, a senior program specialist with Impact Justice’s Restorative Justice Project, wrote that for restorative justice to be effective, the United States must first make reparations to African Americans and Native Americans for past harms. ³

Impact Justice’s work involves setting up a program through which homeowners are subsidized for taking in people just released from prison. ⁴ The nonprofit also works to end sexual abuse and rape in jails and prisons. ⁵

Background

Impact Justice’s total revenues increased from $7.84 million in 2018 to $11.6 million in 2019. ⁶ Impact Justice was founded in 2015 ⁷ and employed 77 people as of 2019. ⁸ The home office is in Oakland, California and there is also an office in Washington, D.C. ⁹

Activities

Homecoming Project

The Homecoming Project provides subsidies to homeowners who rent their rooms for up to six months ¹⁰ at an affordable rate to people who just got out of prison. ¹¹ The program was launched in August 2018, and in 2020, Impact Justice received a $2.5 million award from the nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners and Wells Fargo to fund it. ¹²

PREA Resource Center

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Resource Center is funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. ⁵ It was created in 2010 and helps corrections agencies by offering training and technical assistance in ending rape in jails, juvenile facilities, and prisons. ¹³

Restorative Justice Project

Sujatha Baliga is the director of the Restorative Justice Project. Baliga has said the concept of restorative justice puts the needs of the victim at the center of the process. ¹⁴ She said instead of asking what law was broken and determining who broke the law and how they should be punished, the focus is on who was harmed, what the victim needs, and who is under the obligation to meet those needs. ¹⁴ A restorative justice facilitator works with the victim and the person who committed the crime and comes to their own solution through face-to-face dialogue and “consensus-based participatory decision making.” ¹⁴

Leadership

Alex Busansky is the president and founder of Impact Justice. ¹⁵ Busansky began his career as a prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in 1987. ¹⁶ He started work with the U.S. Department of Justice in 1998. ¹⁶ He was assigned to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002 and was counsel to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI). ¹⁶ Busansky joined the left-of-center Vera Institute of Justice in 2004 as the executive director of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons. ¹⁶

In 2018, Busansky stated that mass incarceration was a “direct legacy of slavery” and Jim Crow laws, claiming it was an attempt made by “conscious policies” to keep African Americans and Latinos in poor neighborhoods. Busansky argues that prison and jail were “a means of oppression” that disproportionately targeted minorities. ¹ Busanky also said that reforming prison policies in ways the critics say is impractical is an essential part of “confronting the racism” that gave rise to mass incarceration and still sustain it in the present. ¹⁷

Shimica Gaskins is a board member with Impact Justice. ⁷ She claimed in August 2020 that the U.S. “disproportionately and harshly” disciplined Black students and pushed them out of traditional schools, ¹⁸ which makes it more difficult for Black students to get into college. ¹⁸ She supported as “educational justice” ² the removal of police from schools in Los Angeles and Oakland, California. ¹⁸ Gaskins stated the Black Lives Matter movement ¹⁸ has brought “global recognition” to how black people are “dehumanized and disenfranchised.”

Sam Lewis is a board member with Impact Justice. ¹⁹ Lewis called the penal system “racially biased” in July 2020 ¹⁹ and said U.S. “institutions” had systemic racism. ¹⁹ He said the money bail system “criminalizes” poverty and race. ¹⁹ Lewis said there was “systemic racial, gender and socioeconomic disparities embedded in our criminal justice system.” ¹⁹