
BI believes centering community to establish self-directed solutions is critical to achieving transformational change and better life outcomes. All too often, communities of color are not engaged in the design and/or implementation of the solutions necessary to achieve their own well-being. As such, sectors have repeatedly failed to make impactful sustainable change.
BI has worked in hundreds of jurisdictions nationally in support of local efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities. Through these efforts, BI realized the significant limitations of the traditional ‘harm reduction’ methods of system reform. Over the years, BI’s innovative methodology has evolved to move beyond traditional justice reform, by addressing the longstanding structural inequities with a cross-sector approach to design and achieve structural well-being for all people.
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. This notion is in direct contrast to the nation’s current operational framework of structural racism. In order to achieve racial justice we must dismantle the evil genius of structural racism, and replace it with a structural well-being frame to provide families and communities what they need to thrive, namely, a sense of belonging, a sense of community, and equitable access to the resources necessary for positive life outcomes.

Our place-based approach involves identifying and assessing the viability of local sites to overcome the challenges that have historically stalled equity reform efforts in most jurisdictions. This work engages local jurisdictions ready to take a journey, supported by the BI, to transform public safety by examining the social determinants of justice.
BI’s process requires an intentional cross-sector process whose values are steeped in services, restorative practices, and humanity rather than custody, control, and suppression. A well-being approach includes the justice sector AND non-judicial public systems (i.e., education, health, child welfare, and housing) in the process, informed by community voices and those directly impacted by the justice apparatus 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 participate in an inquiry about how racial hierarchy exists in the administration of justice and join us in our 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.