Danielle Brutus is the Director of Capacity Building, at the Neighborhood Safety Initiative, an initiative by the Center for Justice Innovation. She is an experienced community organizer working to improve communities and policy within the criminal justice and government bureaucracies.
Thesis overview
Goal: To understand the ways participatory policy research is being done, and to understand what the possibilities may look like in utilizing restorative frameworks and creative interventions to make the research better, and even healing for participants.
Outcome goal: Research and outcomes that are more effective and democratic
Process goal: Design processes for research that empower and provide healing to the participants.
Vision:
Create processes and methods for restorative research
Shift research beyond participatory towards collective healing
Enhance participatory research through restorative frameworks
Questions:
Warm up:
What exactly do you do, and what do you love about what you do?
director of capacity building. has been working with NSI since 2018, started as a coordinator
leads team of program mangers provide facilitation, toolkits, and education to folks who are interested in place keeping work in communities
bringing vision of public safety to life
teaching community how to do the work
love the people and networking with people who look like me and supporting vision outside of the police
High level:
What are some methods of capacity building and participatory research that you are interested in exploring, but have not gotten the chance to? What are the barriers to doing them?
5 priority areas: economic stability, physical space, safety justice, health and wellbeing and youth development
came out of constant convos with residents
these are the frameworks
methods: place keeping and place making - form of community prevention through environment design
encourage residence to improve spaces
Local Neighborhood Stat - participatory budgeting event
each year come to community with ballot to vote
follows Central Neighborhood Stat- working group with city agencies and influential leaders to help draft policies
coordinator's meet with residents weekly and then monthly with local gov
very much in it but would love to do more data and drive the narrative of how organizing can strengthen communities and bring safety outside of police
What about NSI’s work is innovative? How is it going?
simply by having people who look like the residents to be the ones making decisions. trust. community members.
residents are the driving change and speaking directly to policy makers.
Is NSI’s work a form of Restorative Justice? What could researchers do in order to create restorative environments for participants?
Should that be a priority?
the qualitative data that comes out of this should be what researchers and makers look to and try to implement
RJ should reflect the desires of harmed communities
theres no sustainability, it’s always one time implementations.
We should be holding the root causes accountable, and working with those to address harms. that is RJ
How might collective healing be a necessary step for participatory research? In what ways does participatory decision making create healing, if at all, for participants and collaborators, particularly within community safety initiatives?
input is healing because it is talking through stresses and having their voices heard. communities want to be asked. and want to be the drivers of change. coming up with solutions is healing.
What did you learn? How does it relate to or help shape your thesis topic?
I learned more about how the work that NSI is doing is both reflective of RJ values, and is working to make this a more credible framework for policy research. Danielle sees participatory community building and research as a healing modality because it allows folks to tell their stories, express their stress, feel heard and seen, and to have agency in solutions. Speaking directly to policy makers is also healing because it provides a sense of empowerment.
NSI is potentially looking for a research fellow that would be working with Dasha to measure impact and create a story and report on their work this summer. I am crossing my fingers that the opportunity works out for me, as Danielle and I were both very excited about the prospect of my collaboration.