After months of anticipation, folks at International Bridges to Justice are starting to see some remarkable ideas, experiences, and commentary from the JusticeMakers community. Here are a couple examples to whet your palette for criminal justice innovation…

1. Legal Aid clinic on Women Abuse and Arbitrary Detention Monitoring has been proposed by Colgolese JusticeMaker Franck and his organization The African Democracy Forum. In short, he proposes:

There is in the D R Congo a common practice of abuse on women and arbitrary detention by the national police aggravated by ignorance and impunity.This project intends to reinforce our legal clinic on women abuse and arbitrary detention by the National police in Kinshasa.

Franck later expanded on challenges within the African Penal system in his posting within the french language criminal justice forum.

2. Justice for All has been proposed by Vikram, a JusticeMaker who has been working with marginalized communities throughout Delhi NCR (National Capital Region), Uttar Pradesh and around India for the past eight years.

The project would advocate towards rectification within the Criminal Justice System / policy / law and also work towards ensuring right to human dignity for above community. The approach will be holistic and by enagaging with various stakeholders… culminating in demand for revamping the System which is Criminal for both its practitioners and clients and cannot deliver Justice.

Vikram also shared his thoughts on Indian criminal justice reform in the JusticeMakers Forum.

Other folks are sharing their own experiences in remarkable detail. Here are a few snippets that we found particularly fascinating.

• In his own guestbook, a Greek JusticeMakers named Alexis.. (with the two periods at the end) shared six ideas against the torture of prisoners.
• Raymund_Narag_JusticeMake shared his own experience as a wrongfully convicted prisoner in the Philippines.
• Junior01, a JusticeMaker from Liberia, talks about his experiences building peace in the wake of the Liberian civil war.

As members of the JusticeMakers community continue to share their insights and ideas, the IBJ team will try and feature them regularly on this blog… and on our homepage. If you’re an applicant and you’d like your project featured… please send us an request at info@justicemakers.net.