At This Bay Area Nonprofit, Restorative Justice Starts With Design

Inside a new space completely designed for restorative justice, no detail is too small. Even the chairs matter.

“The contrast of furniture in incarceration settings is that it’s bolted down. The environment itself speaks to we don’t trust you,” said Garrett Jacobs, director of research and evaluation for Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, the architecture firm that designed the new home for Community Works, a nonprofit that provides alternatives to the traditional criminal justice system.

This space, which officially opened Tuesday in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood, is bright and airy, with walls covered in wood paneling, soothing colors, and art, and yes, the furniture is movable.

“It immediately has undertones of trust and empowerment,” Jacobs said.

Adrienne Hogg, co-executive director of Community Works, said after nearly 30 years of working almost exclusively out of county jail facilities, the organization secured a 10-year lease on the 6,000-square-foot site, where it plans to house programs, including support for survivors of domestic violence, diversion programs for youth and young adults, and reentry programs for people exiting incarceration.

On a mezzanine level in the new space, past colorfully decorated kites, a group of teenagers took a break, playing a round of guess-the-celebrity. They’re part of a Community Works’ Project WHAT!, a youth leadership program for 12 to 18-year-olds who have a parent who is or was incarcerated or deported.

JC Foster, a 20-year-old peer mentor with the program, said the kids are blowing off steam after a particularly “grueling” writing activity, where they wrote a letter to their incarcerated or deported parent, or a letter they wish they had gotten from them.

“ It’s really opened my eyes to the problems that a lot of people face in our communities, especially how certain people are targeted for incarceration,” said Foster, who joined the program when he was 14.

Foster said he’s been able to draw on his experience in Project WHAT! to advise other programs that work with children with incarcerated parents on best practices.

“I feel as though it’s changing the world a bit by bit at a time,” he added.

Community Works’ practice of restorative justice — which focuses on addressing the root causes of crimes, healing those affected by crimes, and making those who commit crimes understand the impacts and root causes of their actions — has had success in reducing recidivism rates among its participants. A 2022 study found that a program run by Community Works and another restorative justice nonprofit for youth ages 13 to 17 facing serious felony charges resulted in a 44% reduction in recidivism — compared to a control group who were prosecuted in the traditional juvenile justice system.

“ It’s not kumbaya, it’s not ‘Let’s hold hands and hand you a get out of jail free card.’ It’s really difficult work that most people spend their whole lives trying to avoid having to do,” said Lara Bazelon, a professor of law at the University of San Francisco and director of its racial justice clinic.

While the nonprofit is excited about the potential of its new brick-and-mortar, Hogg acknowledges that it faces political headwinds at the local and federal levels. She said the recall of both San Francisco’s and Alameda County’s progressive district attorneys in recent years has meant the nonprofit is getting fewer referrals for its programs, and less funding due to cuts to federal grants by the Trump administration.

“That means we start to pull back on services that are supporting the very people that now we want to police against,” Hogg said. “Because what we’re doing is making kids accountable for themselves, their families and their community. So the narrative that is now out there about ‘tough on crime’ is actually doing the opposite of what folks say they want.”

In recent years, California has put more effort into rehabilitating incarcerated people. In 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom redesignated San Quentin, the state’s oldest prison, as a rehabilitation facility, and later that year, the state closed its juvenile justice detention centers, opting for more local control.

Bazelon said Community Works’ new space is a hopeful sign that there is still interest and funding in alternatives to traditional criminal justice.

“ It’s very important to not just consider, but really embrace and build up and study these alternatives, if for no other reason than we know that the current system that we have doesn’t work the way that it is designed,” she said.