Learn the Issues

Many of us know that something is wrong with the criminal justice system, but we don’t know what to do about it or where to start. Our coalition has done a deep dive into the roots of the school-to-prison pipeline to diagram the systemic problems we face. Our coalition provides roadmaps and a wealth of information for people interested in big-system shifts for the incarceration and criminal justice systems.

Stop Punishing Taxpayers, Start Rebuilding Community Report

CLICK HERE to Download Full .PDF  Acknowledgements Thank you to the thousands of citizens who have survived the trauma of incarceration and come forward to share experiences and solutions through testimonials, books, reports and programs in order that the Restorative Community Coalition could extract, condense and synthesize ideas to be […]

Stop Punishing Taxpayers – Start Rebuilding Community Read More »

Jails_Sheriffs_policy_making

Jails, Sheriffs and Carceral Policymaking is a useful law review article about the “hidden to the public” story of the business of incarceration that verifies the hands-on research done in Whatcom County by the Restorative CommUnity Coalition.  When we started, our work was striving to help people who got out

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11 x 17″ LARGE POSTER FOR COMMUNITY EDUCATION – TWO SIDED Side One- BLINDSPOTS:UNEXPECTED FINDINGS FROM JAIL TRAUMA RESEARCH Side Two – WHATCOM COUNTY JAIL TRAUMA CHART: RADICALIZED ACUTE DISTRESS UNDER DURESS (RADD) & REPETITIVE ACCELERATING TRAUMA (RAT) This poster was created to synthesize the emotional distress people experience as

Blindspots Poster Available for Purchase Read More »

11 x 17″ LARGE POSTER FOR COMMUNITY EDUCATION – TWO SIDED Side One- BLINDSPOTS:UNEXPECTED FINDINGS FROM JAIL TRAUMA RESEARCH Side Two – WHATCOM COUNTY JAIL TRAUMA CHART: RADICALIZED ACUTE DISTRESS UNDER DURESS (RADD) & REPETITIVE ACCELERATING TRAUMA (RAT) This poster was created to synthesize the emotional distress people experience as

Whatcom County Jail Trauma Chart – the RADD-RAT Symptoms Read More »

Wow!  Check out this County in Oregon!  While Whatcom County could easily have been the leader in justice reform, we just got ACE’s by Multnomah!  Whatcom County could learn from them!  And there is more to do, if the County will stop pretending that they need to build a jail

2020 Reform from Multanomah County – Awesome! Read More »

What happens to people when they get arrested? Most people don’t know because no-one really wants to talk about it. Why not? Joy Gilfilen, President of the Restorative Community Coalition, did a quest to find out.  It is disturbing to the soul. People who get arrested go through dramatic arrest

Blindspots 1.1 Whatcom County Jail Trauma Study Read More »

Blindspots 1.2:  Whatcom County Jail Trauma Research Study Episode 2 It’s about discovering the false pre-assumptions that people make about an arrest. Joy had no idea she herself would have blindspots even after years of researching the issues and working with people. For example, she discovered that most people who

Blindsposts 1.2 – Radicalized Acute Distress under Duress (RAD) Read More »

Whatcom County Jail Trauma Chart

The immediate and then compound ripple effects that come from just an arrest process, then a jailing process are serious and last a lifetime. All this happens before a court is even involved or a person is charged with a crime. The immediate and then compound ripple effects that come

Blindspots: Unexpected Findings from Jail Trauma Research Read More »

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