Junauda Petrus and Rep. María Isa are helping to bring attention to long-standing and generally underappreciated approaches to address public safety

Getting funded requires a culture shift in society, she says. “A recognition that incarceration does not work. We do not acknowledge the reality of where the harm is coming from.”

Punishment culture encourages the view that an individual deserves harm — that the individual person is a “bad” person. Punishment marks someone as not worthy of belonging.