Smart Justice
Smart Justice covers the pursuit of better outcomes on justice system issues, including incarceration, foster care, and juvenile justice. The podcast is produced by Restore Hope.
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Smart Justice
Shield Our Youth: Kids Born Into Chaos
What if there was a smarter way to approach juvenile justice? One that identifies troubled youth before they commit serious crimes and connects them with resources instead of sending them to detention?
Kevin Hunt knows firsthand how easily young people can slip into criminal behavior. Growing up in Little Rock during the notorious "Banging in the Rock" era, Hunt started with stealing coins from fountains before escalating to purse snatching and eventually more serious crimes. Despite having loving family members, the influences of poverty, neighborhood crime, and early exposure to drugs created a pathway to prison. "We just react a lot based off the trauma stuff that we went through," Hunt explains, highlighting how generational trauma drives impulsive behavior.
After serving time for firearms offenses, Hunt transformed his life and now leads Lessons Learned, a program helping youth avoid his mistakes. He focuses particularly on elementary students, believing that building confidence and academic skills early prevents later issues.
Meanwhile, in Fort Smith, Arkansas, police are pioneering Shield Our Youth, an innovative initiative tackling rising juvenile crime rates. Officer Blake Scott, who once distrusted police himself, leads this effort to identify at-risk youth and connect them with support before they enter the justice system. Rather than immediate arrests, officers investigate underlying issues—like the runaway teen Scott found who did not have a mattress on his bed at home and was being forced to use a trash can as a toilet. Instead of punishment, Scott connected the family with resources and maintained contact to ensure ongoing support.
Shield Our Youth coordinates existing community services through specialized software, creating a seamless web of support. "The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing," explains Captain Stephen Creek about previous disconnected efforts. "All of the resources we need are right here."
Want to help troubled youth in your community? Both Hunt and Officer Scott agree: the most valuable contribution is your time. Mentoring, simply showing up at games or performances, or offering homework help can create ripple effects that change a young person's trajectory forever.
The Smart Justice podcast is hosted by Restore Hope Executive Director Paul Chapman. Executive producer is Karen Tricot Steward. Production and videography by Ti King.
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And that's what happened to a lot of us, like we just react a lot based off the trauma stuff that we went through. Like that's why it's so easy for a person that's been through something just pick up a gun and just start shooting and then think about it because they got so much built up.
Speaker 2:Crime and punishment are hot topics, but are there solutions? We're hearing about the best we can do. What if there's a smarter way to approach justice, one that delivers better return on investment? I look at it like about every nine beds occupied for a year, that's around a million dollars. Strengthens, law enforcement and courts I get fired up about that.
Speaker 3:I'm excited about the potential that we have to really do something that's going to change generations to come.
Speaker 2:And connects families in crisis with the resources they need to end cycles of crime.
Speaker 3:Having that support in place. I wouldn't be here without it.
Speaker 2:This isn't just a theory. We're covering real, evidence-based solutions that are improving our communities. Welcome to Smart Justice. This is Season 4, juvenile Justice.
Speaker 1:I had a really good loving family.
Speaker 2:You know mother, father, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunties uncles, kevin Hunt, grew up in an impoverished neighborhood surrounded by drugs and crime.
Speaker 1:The love was there. I was told what to do and what not to do, but I allowed my circumstances to pull me in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2:Food stamps were reserved for buying essential items like meat and other staple foods, so he felt a sense of excitement when he could come up with some money to buy luxuries like candy and sodas. It all started with taking some coins from a fountain downtown.
Speaker 1:Once someone told us about all these coins and this water. We used to go down and take up coins out the water all the time and that was 50 cents, 75 cents, a dollar, until we got ran out, it seemed like petty theft, not really a big deal.
Speaker 2:It was what his friends were doing.
Speaker 1:It was easy for all of us, as friends, to get involved with the things we were doing, because when you're poor monetary and mentally, you make poor decisions.
Speaker 2:But over time the stealing escalated into more serious crimes.
Speaker 1:Somewhere in there, and I'm not sure who introduced us to it. We started talking about you know, man, we ought to snatch some purses, and then all it took was somebody to show us the amount of money that they got and we was kids, you know. So if someone had $12, that was a lot of money to us. Snatching purses led me to committing other crimes and get involved with gangs as well too, and other type of robberies.
Speaker 2:Adults in his household had introduced him to drugs and firearms at a very young age.
Speaker 1:My mother's boyfriend used to help me cut marijuana up and put it in bags.
Speaker 2:when I was in elementary, he knew where the guns in his house were hidden and would play with them when no one was looking.
Speaker 1:And I used to tell my friends when I shot it. So that did something to me. You know, I think I was in the. That was at the beginning of my sixth grade or the end of my fifth grade.
Speaker 2:His mother drifted in and out of his life. She would be in prison or sometimes too consumed by drug addiction to be at home. His father didn't live with them but would occasionally pick him up and spend some time with him, but for the most part he lived at his grandmother's house pick him up and spend some time with him, but for the most part he lived at his grandmother's house.
Speaker 1:A lot of my anger at school was because, you know, I didn't have mom around as much as you know, I loved her to death.
Speaker 1:That was my person, you know. Just not having her at home, you come and walking from school to you, back to your grandmother's house, and you hope your mom's there and she's not there and if she is there she's in the room locked in with friends and family using drugs, and that did a lot to me and I was struggling in elementary and I was getting in trouble in elementary. So I got put out of class a lot in elementary and didn't get put out of school and so every time I was getting put out I was missing out on learning my ABCs and counting to 100. And so I was always behind and I never caught up. And then once you know that you can't read and write because the class going to let you know when you mispronounce words, when you don't solve the problem right, and that tears you up just a little bit more but it also makes you give up. By the time I was in sixth grade I knew I was behind.
Speaker 2:In eighth grade, he made a life-changing decision he chose to drop out of school.
Speaker 1:He'd been selling drugs there and I gave somebody some roll-up joints and that person actually got caught and he told it on me and so I got pulled to the office and I did have marijuana roll-ups in my shoe.
Speaker 1:And so when I got pulled in the office and did have marijuana roll-ups in my shoe, and so when I got pulled in the office and they had me sitting there waiting on, I guess, searching other stuff, lockers and whatever they were searching, I've seen one of my friend's um mother come pick him up and I was just looking through the door and so I took the drugs out of my shoe and I put it in the trash can, up under plastic in the trash can, and I asked her. I asked my friend mother, can she give me a ride home? She said yeah, and so I just decided not to go back to school and at all period and uh, that's, that was the worst decision I could have made, because I got involved with uh, just about everything and like, say, eventually the gang stuff and all this stuff just outsold on its own. For Hunt.
Speaker 2:These outcomes seemed inevitable rather than preventable. Witnessing systematic poverty and crime had a strong psychological impact on him and his peers.
Speaker 1:We didn't see a way out, even though there was a way out. But we couldn't see a way out because when you look within our family, we've seen drug users, high school dropout people in and out of prison, so it was easy for us to make those choices. And that's kind of like some of the same choices you see young people making today.
Speaker 2:Hunt grew up in what many people in Little Rock call the Banging in the Rock days, referring to an HBO documentary that was released in 1994 about street gangs in Arkansas's capital city. At the time, Little Rock was one of the most dangerous cities in the country.
Speaker 1:A lot of stuff happened like a lot of fights, a lot of fights, a lot of shootings, a lot of fights, a lot of shooting, a lot of fights, and so that have you angry and mad. And so it's easy for your behavior, your attitude, you to trigger something, trigger something off and then you react to it just like that. And that's what happened to a lot of us. We just react a lot based off the trauma stuff that we went through. That's why it's so easy for a person that's been through something just pick up a gun and just start shooting and then think about it because they got so much built up, they got so much built up.
Speaker 2:I'm Paul Chapman. It's not hard for young people to believe they're trapped in their circumstances when they lack visible success stories. They can easily be pulled into crime without fully grasping the consequences if they lack direct access to support and encouragement. Hunt explains that many youth assume that success is unattainable because they only associate it with extreme wealth of fame. He says seeing relatable everyday success stories like teachers, business owners or community leaders can have a meaningful impact on young people rather than the idolization of distant figures.
Speaker 1:They need to see the regular everyday person that goes to work, go home, go to church raising their kids. We just need to see what success looked like.
Speaker 2:As a minor, Hunt managed to slip through the cracks and evade consequences for his crimes. He wasn't a part of the juvenile justice system, but then things changed.
Speaker 1:Everything that I did as a youth, I got away with it Like. I mean as a young person, like from 11 to 15, the minute that I did something that can be considered as an adult charge, I got caught and ended up going to prison for it and my generation. Of course we came to prison with the gang stuff, but boy, we flooded the prisons because a lot of first-time people started coming to prison.
Speaker 2:Hunt spent many years in prison for firearms-related offenses and fleeing law enforcement, but the day came when he decided to make a transformation. He made a commitment to change his ways, which set off a chain reaction of positive outcomes. Today, he serves as the founder and president of Lessons Learned, a program dedicated to youth violence prevention and intervention. He's now a mentor, a speaker and an advocate for youth. He's been working with students from elementary through high school. When it comes to making a lasting impact, he says the younger the student, the better.
Speaker 1:That's why I love elementary students. If I can capture those young people right now, from K to sixth grade or fifth grade, and make sure that they're some excellent readers, writers, critical thinkers and self-esteem is real high, then I won't worry so much, from the sixth to the ninth, eighth and ninth through the twelfth grade, because they have the confidence to go, sit in the classroom and raise their hand. I didn't have it. A lot of us didn't have it.
Speaker 2:Hunt has come a long way. He held a position in the governor's office as the minority affairs liaison and even received a pardon. He currently serves on the board of Arkansas's Coalition for Juvenile Justice. He's worried about young people and how they're being negatively influenced. One of those ways, he says, is by drill music.
Speaker 1:And what I'm finding out. A lot of people don't understand what drill music is. They don't know why kids are doing certain things.
Speaker 2:Drill music is a type of hip-hop music known for its violent lyrics and aggressive sound. One of the terms often used in the music is OPS, which stands for opposition or enemies. It makes young people seek out OPS because they want that lifestyle. Hunt says it's important for everyone to understand how serious this issue is.
Speaker 1:This is not a game. People are dying every day by the hands of the OPS. This is not a game. People are dying every day by the hands of their ops.
Speaker 2:He says that, ultimately, if we want kids to move forward in a positive way and break cycles of crime, substance abuse and poverty, we need to address a major stumbling block generational trauma.
Speaker 1:A lot of those homes. The parents are going through a lot. Their parent went through a lot and their parent went through a lot and just passed on to them. And now the kids getting two, three generations or something.
Speaker 2:In this episode, we're visiting the police department of Fort Smith, arkansas, where there's a new program underway to build trust between law enforcement and at-risk youth. Many at-risk youth have a complex and sometimes strained relationship with the police, shaped by their personal experiences or community narratives, but officers in that city are determined to change that.
Speaker 5:Support for Smart Justice is provided by Restore Hope. Have you ever wondered why some communities aren't seeing the outcomes they seek when trying to support at-risk families, even those that seem to have all the right assets? Restore Hope is a software and services organization dedicated to empowering communities by offering the coordination and tools needed to support the vulnerable, like those involved in the justice and child welfare systems. Learn how you can bring these tools to your community at RestoreHopeio. Restore Hope is a non-profit aiming to reduce incarceration and the need for foster care through a community-driven approach.
Speaker 2:Officials in Fort Smith have been encouraged by a recent drop in overall crime. But despite that progress, a troubling reality has surfaced. Juvenile crime is on the rise, especially more violent offenses. Recognizing the urgency of the issue, the local police department launched a new initiative to curb juvenile crime Shield Our Youth. The program identifies at-risk youth and then offers them guidance and resources so they won't resort to criminal behavior. The goal is to prevent them from becoming entangled in the juvenile justice system, because once they're in the system, it can be hard to get out. Police Chief Danny Baker calls it a fresh take on handling juvenile delinquency.
Speaker 6:You know, this is really going to be a police-led venture and that's stepping way outside of the box for us engaging with these young people, I think at first. I think it's going to be a surprise to a lot of people because they're not accustomed to seeing that. You know, folks are going to have to maybe say this is something that we need to let them take care of before it gets to the juvenile court system. We know that once they get there, you know the path is kind of set and so we want to do everything we can to keep them out of that.
Speaker 2:The program is enhancing coordination among several organizations to facilitate early identification of at-risk youth Law enforcement, social services, community service providers and schools. At the initiative's heart is a specially designed officer to focus on prevention rather than punishment. That role belongs to Officer Blake Scott.
Speaker 3:Finding approaches other than putting kids in jail. You know that's not the right answer and I believe that sincerely we want it to be with any contact that we have with the minors and kids. It will be something encouraging them to stay on the right track and not take that wrong turn.
Speaker 2:Scott wants to be a familiar face for young people in his community, fostering an environment of trust and safety. He emphasizes that effective law enforcement is about human connection.
Speaker 3:I want to leave that impression on a kid as somebody that they see and they, you know, feel safe with, see a face that they feel familiar with.
Speaker 2:But he also knows there will be challenges. Many young people struggle to believe that the police are really there to help.
Speaker 3:A lot of people don't trust police officers. You know one side of my family grew up is like hey, we don't talk to cops, we don't trust cops because of what they done, how they treated us. You know I wasn't pro law enforcement growing up and it was. You know I still have a car that I was getting pulled up with when I was younger and it has rims on it and you know the profiling of that car. You know I get it. If somebody sees something, they may take something as an impression. If you see somebody you know as me, my mother used to always tell me hey, pull your pants up, don't walk around like this. You know they're going to describe you as something that they don't even know. They don't know you, they just see, they just know what they see and what they believe in. Me as a kid is not not knowing what cops were, were scared of them, felt like I was.
Speaker 2:Because of those experiences, being a police officer is not a profession that he ever expected to go into as a kid?
Speaker 3:for sure not as a teenager, definitely not.
Speaker 2:As a child, his dream was to play in the NFL, but when he realized that might not be in the cards, he enrolled in the military. His service instilled in him a sense of discipline and a desire to serve his country and his community. He then traded in the military uniform for a police uniform and realized that military uniforms tend to receive more positive reactions.
Speaker 3:You see US Army on your heart. You see your name tag on the right side, you see your flag on the right side and you have your job title. You see that and everybody's like, yes, they feel you're fighting for us. And then on the flip side of it, the police officer. You see that and basically, when you put it on, it's the same thing. You're fighting crime and you're protecting and serving. And so you know, a lot of people see that and they get scared oh, they're going to arrest me. They arrested my dad. You see this police officer interaction. There's one call away. I see him driving a car he could pull me over for driving left of center. I see this cop that can get me for my tag expiring yesterday.
Speaker 2:Officer Scott wants to change that perspective. He says being a police officer has been rewarding, but it has also opened his eyes to the harsh reality some of the youth in his community face. For example, youth from unstable home environments often face a significantly higher risk of getting into trouble and being arrested. He remembers the case of a teenager who repeatedly ran away from home. His parents would call for police help. On one particular day, when the police were searching for him, Scott found that boy crying in a park.
Speaker 3:We kept dealing with this kid, dealing with him, dealing with him, running away. We found him and he had his backpack on and he was just sitting there and I was like hey, man, you know dealing with him so much I knew his face and I called him by his name. He was like yeah, I looked at him. He's like man, I just can't do it. I can't do it and you know, this kid is 14 to 15. He was in that range. He's like I can't do it and I'm like man, what's going on? And he was like he's like listen, I know, every time y'all come here, y'all speak to my mom on the porch and y'all never come in the house. But he's like man, keep, please, just walk into my room, just please walk into my room. And I'm like man, I mean I can't come in your house unless your mom of course, give me consent or allow me to do that.
Speaker 3:But what's going on? He's like man, I don't even want to tell you, I just want you to see it. So he took the boy home and asked his mom for permission to go inside. She's like yeah, you can go in there, he just needs to stop. You know he's causing me issues. I have another child that I'm raising and I just need help.
Speaker 3:So I opened his door and I was in disbelief as soon as I walked in the house. Like the smell overcame me from the dogs and in his room was I can't really explain it it was the bed, was there, the baseboard of the bed, with no mattress. He had a closet and there was no clothes hung up. All the clothes were laid out. His room didn't have electric and he was like this is where I sleep at, I don't have anything, and I seen that. And when we walk into this house we see a lot of the way people live. But I don't know if it was the punishment, but he was like I can't even use the restroom. This is where I use the restroom.
Speaker 3:And when I seen what he was saying to use the restroom, it broke my heart, which was a trash can, and he was saying he was dumping it out the window and you know he's telling me this stuff and showing me, and he was, you know, as a kid. You know I'm just sitting there, I'm having to make a decision, being in that house. What do I need to do? I knew that I needed to get somebody else in there to see that I want another set of eyes on it, so I contacted my supervisor. Dhs was involved. Child Protective Services was involved. We can take a kid to jail for being a runaway, but understanding and seeing that, you know, I was like I would probably run away too if I lived like that. He didn't have anything to do. He was just sitting in the room and he told me he was just sitting there and he's like I just can't do this anymore and he decided to leave, as a kid, you know, and it blew my mind and I want to ask why, why, why?
Speaker 2:Officer Scott then asked the child's mother if he could take the boy to get something to eat. He got him some clothes and also a pizza. The teen told him he hadn't had pizza since he was five years old.
Speaker 3:And you know there's something that we take for granted us eating a simple, you know, pizza from Gino's CeCe's Pizza. You know there's stories like that that you see being boots on the ground at tough situations that you have to decide and make a decision on if you can't just sit there and not do anything and you know I have several of them type of stories. But that one, for me, is what was touching because, like I said, you, you do a runaway and then the child is, if he's run a runaway and not being kidnapped, he's a suspect and, like I said, that's an arrestable offense that we would take the jdc and their parents would have to come and, of course, dhs is involved because this kid is running away. But you know, something as simple as you know also could have been like, hey, you, you did this again, come on, you know, could have arrested him and the parents would have been like, no, take him, he needs to pay for what he did.
Speaker 3:And you know something as simple as that and you could have made that one decision. But now you make another decision that could change that kid's life. Instead of arresting the boy, the officer connected him and his family with resources to get the help that they needed. And I've done follow-ups with there and he was taking out the home for a little bit and I'm still in contact with him now because, like I said, he's 16, now said 17 and I'm still, you know, trying to encourage him to do the right thing and you know the living condition. He showed me pictures. It improved. Like I said, I'm sure those resources help the parent and I believe to help and to prevent this. It all starts at home, like it has to start at home.
Speaker 2:Another key part of the Shield, our Youth initiative, is software that allows the police to easily connect with community service providers to get the kids the help that they need. Captain Stephen Creek explains that for Fort Smith, the solution to juvenile crime wasn't about coming up with new resources. Instead, it was marshalling existing resources in a more effective way.
Speaker 7:We don't need a new organization created. We don't need anything new. All of the resources we need are right here. They're right here at home, in Fort Smith, sebastian County and even across the state. There's resources that we could be utilizing. The problem we ran into here that we realized was that we're not communicating.
Speaker 7:I always like to compare it. You know, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. This is where you go and we can guide you in the right direction to a resource or multiple resources and try to come up with a long-term solution. We just have to come at it collaboratively and stop thinking that one person or one organization is going to change it. It doesn't matter whose name's on it, it doesn't matter who's responsible for it, it doesn't matter who's getting the accolades.
Speaker 7:What matters is kids. They need help. It's basically all of your contacts that you could possibly imagine that may be involved in anything from home life troubles to the youth, to school, to, you know, needing education. It's just everything. I can't name off everything because I couldn't write that list. It's all right there at your fingertips and it connects them all like just a big web, no longer scrolling through your phone or hoping you typed in what organization that person was with, and no more going through your Rolodex of papers and looking for who you need to call and phone conferences and email threads.
Speaker 2:Officer Scott agrees and says that this approach will lead to greater trust. It's the difference between wanting to help and showing young people that there's actually a system in place to do that effectively, connecting them with the resources that will truly help them overcome their struggles.
Speaker 3:If the community and the people that you're serving feels that you're approachable, that they come to you with a problem, it may be the solution right there is you having an answer for them?
Speaker 7:Just getting us out in the community and letting people see the other side of us and getting to know us, and that just that really fosters a team environment of the police department working with their community. And when you can do that successfully, that's when you see crime rate go down, shielding them from the bad, shielding them from the negative influences, shielding them from the things they can't control, shielding them from their bad decisions. It just looks like being busy and finding yourself making contact with a lot, of, a lot of the youth in the city in unfortunate circumstances. It's really sad to see some of these crimes that we're investigating or that our criminal investigations division is following up on, or the scenes that our officers are responding to, and then you find out it involves a group of 15, 16-year-olds. It just kind of blows your mind Redirecting our troubled youth and helping them to become successful so that they can move on forward in their lives and become citizens contributing to their community, going to do awesome, big, great things, no matter what that may look like to them.
Speaker 7:That can be by looking through our summaries at the end of the shift, seeing that someone dealt with a youth in a crime or made an arrest for something and it involved a juvenile. You know that's us being proactive and going and seeking them out to say, hey, wrong path, wrong direction. Let's try to redirect that. It could look like parents or teachers or guardians, someone coming to us and wanting to get all that started, and we're advertising it on social media and on our website and we're getting advertising out there so that people can actually, like I said, come to us like a beacon of help for troubled youth Creek hopes that young people who benefit from the program will one day return as advisors to support others facing the same challenges that they once did.
Speaker 7:I want them to come back and start helping mentor. Hey, I was there, you know I did this, I went through it. It was. You know it worked. Look at me and just have this recycling of mentors and youth helping youth. You know people that were there and experienced it.
Speaker 6:There is absolutely hope, no doubt in my mind, police officers out of this program.
Speaker 6:You know the recruiting aspect of it is there as well.
Speaker 6:You know we're constantly struggling to find new folks to come into law enforcement and you know, if we're able to intervene in a young person's life, maybe there'll be some that decide. You know what I'm going to go down the righteous path and I want to be a part of being a positive thing in my community and not a negative. We're obviously going to be interacting with people and young people who are already in the system and we hope to be able to, you know, have some successful outcomes there as well. But we really want to focus and use our police resources to intervene before they get there, maybe showing signs early in the schools, maybe having some discipline issues. I believe this is going to be successful. I think that once the program grows, we'll, you know, modify maybe what it looks like, maybe add a few more police officers, maybe even do something like the crisis, the co-response crisis intervention unit. You know, pair a non-law enforcement professional with our SHIELDER youth officers and let them, let them work in the community together and we know it'll have great success.
Speaker 2:Baker says Fort Smith doesn't seem to have the problem with group violence that other parts of the state are seeing, but the community is seeing more guns on the street.
Speaker 6:If we don't do something about it now, I'm afraid that the level of violence is going to start increasing just because of the availability of firearms.
Speaker 2:Keeping juveniles away from the criminal justice system has many advantages, Because once they are in, it can be hard for them to stay out. Stigma and limited opportunities can make it difficult for them to secure jobs or housing. If they're on probation, they can be sent back for more minor offenses like not adhering to curfews or being at mandatory check-ins, and by spending time in detention they may miss critical years of education and skill building that cause them to fall behind. So what can the average Arkansan who wants to help at-risk youth do to assist? Officer Blake Scott believes that the best donation is the gift of time. True change, as he notes, happens when caring adults invest their energy and believe in the potential of these young lives.
Speaker 3:The sacrifice of your time is what they need. Money is always something that these kids or these families need. That's the time, the boots on the ground.
Speaker 2:This includes becoming a mentor at a local youth organization, getting to know young people in your neighborhood or helping overwhelmed parents by watching children or offering tutoring help. Just showing up for a young person at their games, performances or school events can make all the difference Encourage them, listen to them and remind them that they matter. We know that small acts of support can create a big impact in keeping kids on the right path. Coming up on the next episode of Smart Justice. The opioid crisis and the rise in substance use amongst young people have spurred a critical need for new specialized programs tailored specifically for adolescents. A new program is offering some help.
Speaker 5:I think it has taken a long time to get these resources to young people and to communities, because this for so long has been an invisible problem.
Speaker 2:And we'll meet a juvenile judge who says isolation and stress are severely affecting young people, driving many to appear in courts.
Speaker 8:Now we've got folks that show up looking like zombies and they're like well, it's just marijuana. Well, that's not your mama's marijuana honor. Support for this podcast is provided by the nonprofit Restore Hope and the Hunter Families Initiative, moving families from crisis to career through innovative case management. Software, Communities can develop strategies to best support those in need in their area and track outcome data in real time to see what's working. Learn more at RestoreHopeio.
Speaker 4:The Smart Justice Podcast is a production of Restore Hope. Visit SmartJusticeorg to read the magazine, as well as extensive coverage of community meetings on justice system-related issues. Our coverage is solutions-oriented, focusing on the innovative ways in which communities are solving issues and the lessons being learned as a result of successes and challenges. That's smartjusticeorg. There you can also sign up for the Smart Justice newsletter so you never miss the latest headlines. And please support us by leaving a rating and review. Thank you.
