Appalachian communities are working with AJRC faculty and students to find innovative ways to build meaningful forms of community safety. Safety is a basic need for everyone, even as it is specific and variable in different regions and communities. With growing recognition of the human and financial toll of mass criminalization and incarceration, local governments and communities across the US are seeking new ways to develop and promote meaningful forms of safety and accountability. These efforts give attention to root and structural causes of violence and harm, the damaging generational and racialized impacts of criminalization, and how investments prioritizing just economic transitions, health care, education, housing, and more, can increase safety for all. In this way, community safety has deep roots – and possibilities – in our current research themes in land, health and housing justice. Our community partners and research collaboratives in community safety start with foundational questions.

We ask:

Community Safety Projects in the Fall 2024 Appalachian Justice Research Lab

Community Partners

Building Community Not Prisons is a coalition of people who oppose the construction of a new federal prison in Letcher County, Kentucky and demand better options for the people of Letcher County and the communities of color that are most impacted by mass incarceration. Their goal is to stop the construction of the prison and ensure that the earmarked $505 million dollars is instead invested in Letcher County and other communities heavily impacted by incarceration.

Community Defense of East Tennessee (CDET) is a grassroots, community-based organization focused on the education, liberation, support, and empowerment of people while fighting injustices, for equity, social and restorative change. This organization is nationally recognized for its work on participatory defense, a community organizing model that empowers individuals and communities to actively participate in the defense of their loved ones facing criminal charges. Organizationally, CDET has reduced community members’ jail time by more than 223 years and decreased the local jail population by 40%.

Knoxville HEART was founded in 2020 to advocate for an alternative response team in Knoxville as a compassionate, evidence-based response to people experiencing mental health crises. HEART members include behavioral health care workers and members whose loved ones live with mental health challenges. Their efforts focus on centering the people who have lived experience with mental health crises in safety and policy discussions.

Located in western North Carolina, the ᏣᎳᎩᏱ ᏕᏣᏓᏂᎸᎩ (Tsalagiyi Detsadanilvgi)/Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is a sovereign nation of 14,000 people descended from the small group of Cherokee who remained in the Eastern United States after the U.S. military, under the Indian Removal Act, displaced 15,000 Cherokee west of the Mississippi River in the late 1830s to territory that is now Cherokee Nation (Tahlequah, Oklahoma). The EBCI has their own government and justice system, separate from the United States.

Affiliated Faculty

*Artwork in the header photo created by Vivian Swayne for the AJRC