VIDEO: It's All Right There: Colorado’s Community Reinvestment Strategy

Public support for local alternatives to incarceration is strong. Community-based programs encourage innovative solutions that meet local priorities, foster collective action, and support new leaders who can spearhead efforts to make their own neighborhoods safer and stronger.

Balestra’s project for the Public Welfare Foundation in Colorado shows that there are endless possibilities in the formation of community-led groups that are a significant and positive force contributing to healthy and thriving communities. 

The community reinvestment strategy in Colorado is designed with an intensive focus on improving the quality of life and repairing some of the harm that has been inflicted in some communities as a result of decades of over-criminalization and mass incarceration. Community Reinvestment is a new legislative strategy that takes savings from criminal justice policy reforms (or other sources of state funding) and reinvests those funds into communities most affected as a way to strengthen community and offer a community-driven, community-led, and publicly financed approach to public safety.