Journal Review by Marianne Makman, M.D.

How would our lives in New Rochelle change if our government had a well-funded Office of Community Safety and Repair? A stunning essay in the February 9 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Eric Reinhart–an anthropologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst affiliated with Harvard, Northwestern, and the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago–explores how policing and punishment could be largely replaced by prevention.

Dr. Reinhart describes the devastation to U.S. communities, especially Black and Brown, of mass incarceration, long solitary confinement, and the long term effects on the incarcerated and their families and laments the terrible effects of all this on physical and mental health and on life expectancy. The government, through policing practices and incarceration, is “causing great harm in our names,” he writes, explaining that “ramifications of abuse behind bars are, like the traumas of war, deeply etched into bodies, minds and relationships.”

Rather than spend billions annually for policing and punishment, Dr. Reinhart argues, the federal government “could progressively reallocate and supplement these resources to a new Department of Community Safety and Repair,” which would fund “community based care” focusing on “stable housing, financial security, addiction treatment and overdose prevention systems, labor rights, environmental regulation and continuous health care access.”

A corps of about 6 workers per 1000 residents could start the repair process. The hiring would give priority to local residents and those who have been previously incarcerated. Training programs could be started in prisons together with a promise of early release. Shared community building by resident hirees would strengthen dignity and social bonds and, since it is focused on prevention, would ultimately lead to considerable public savings.

The abolition of the oppressive system of incarceration could be compared with the abolition of slavery. Bold steps can ultimately free us from our violent present and past.

To me, this presents a model for a funded pilot project in our own city and others like it. There is no need to wait for a sluggish and historically racist Federal government to step up to this vital task.