Abstract
This Article reconceptualizes preventive justice—the public safety paradigm that seeks to prevent harm before it occurs. Scholars have long documented how cities have advanced this paradigm through largely punitive measures, notably variants of broken windows policing, which posit that aggressive misdemeanor enforcement deters more serious crime. Yet in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests, and as underscored recently in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, these measures have faced a legitimacy crisis—prompting calls for nonpunitive responses to nonviolent incidents.
This Article establishes a preventive justice approach that advances health and safety without emphasizing crime deterrence. It draws on fieldwork research on alternative emergency response programs (“Alternative Responses”) that proliferated after the 2020 protests to replace police in health crises and other nonviolent incidents. Data include interviews with fifty individuals and over two hundred hours of observations in Oakland, California; Dayton, Ohio; and Madison, Wisconsin.
The findings reveal a paradox. Although government officials claimed Alternative Responses to be separate from police, these programs are in fact institutionally enmeshed with law enforcement agencies. But despite this enmeshment, Alternative Responses employ distinct preventive methods at the street level: While police deter crime via traditional enforcement actions, these programs prevent harm through various nonpunitive means, notably the provision of life-sustaining resources and connections to needed services.
This research illuminates a preventive justice approach called “supported crisis response.” Grounded in a revised, health-centered understanding of rehabilitation, this approach ensures that people have agency to make decisions, resources to bring those decisions to fruition, and support to sustain the fruits of those choices. This approach also suggests a model for public safety governance—one that requires near-term reforms and long-term structural changes to expand Alternative Responses’ involvement in nonviolent incidents and to limit the role of police.
Recommended Citation
Benjamin A. Barsky,
Prevention Beyond Deterrence,
75
Emory L. J.
353
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/elj/vol75/iss2/2