About Us

What We Do

Structural Well-Being Framework ©

Centering community to establish self-directed solutions is critical to achieving transformational change and better life outcomes. Communities of color are not routinely engaged in the design and/or implementation of the solutions to achieve their own well-being. And sectors have repeatedly failed to make impactful sustainable change.

BI has worked in 300+ jurisdictions nationally to support local efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities. Over time, however, BI realized the limitations of “harm reduction” and evolved to address the longstanding structural inequities with a cross-sector approach to design and achieve structural well-being.

BI defines structural well-being as a system of public policies, institutional and inclusive practices, cultural representations, and other norms that work to strengthen families, communities and individual well-being for positive life outcomes. To dismantle the nation’s current operational framework of structural racism, we must replace it with a structural well-being frame to provide families and communities what they need to thrive: a sense of belonging and community, and equitable access to the resources necessary for positive life outcomes.

Place-Based Approach

Our place-based approach identifies and assesses the viability of local sites to overcome challenges that have historically stalled equity reform in most jurisdictions. This work engages local jurisdictions ready to take a journey to transform public safety by examining the social determinants of justice.

BI’s process is cross-sector and steeped in services, restorative practices, and humanity rather than custody, control, and suppression. Participants include justice sector and non-judicial public systems (i.e., education, health, child welfare, and housing) alongside community and those directly impacted as fully engaged, authentic partners.

Critical to this work is the willingness of cities and counties to engage in a process to collect, analyze, and use data that correlates the intersection of services to families across sectors. This requires trust and transparency around budget allocations and service delivery approaches. BI challenges jurisdictions to inquire how racial hierarchy exists in the administration of justice and join us in a journey to imagine better safety outcomes for communities.

To deconstruct how structural racism operations in local jurisdictions, we engage four major issues:

Negotiating the long-held principle that justice is colorblind and race-neutral thereby negating the necessity to address policies and practices that reflect racialized social control.

Investment in communities that most populate the justice sector is outside the justice sector’s purview. Community disinvestment is a structural issue larger than the justice sector can handle alone, requiring political solutions that public systems cannot control.

Government is not structured to promote flexible, cross-sector responses to complex human services problems that involve safety.

It is difficult for elected and appointed officials to share power with each other and communities most in need of human service interventions.

Our Services

BUILDING STRONGER CONNECTIONS

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