A series of Research Briefs designed to bring research fndings to policy makers What is Justice Reinvestment? Justice Reinvestment is a strategy for reducing the number of people in the prison system by investing funds drawn from the corrections budget into communities that produce large numbers of prisoners. The term was coined in 2003 in the United States of America (Tucker & Cadora 2003) with the idea of redirecting a portion of the $54 billion the United States of America spent on prisons into addressing underlying causes of crime in high-incarceration neighbourhoods. The originators of Justice Reinvestment advocated ‘taking a geographic approach to public safety that targets money for programs in education, health, job creation and job training in low-income communities’ (Tucker & Cadora 2003), and rebuilding human resources and physical infrastructure including schools, healthcare facilities, parks and public spaces. In order to do this, accountability and funds were to be devolved to local authorities, to seek community level solutions to community level problems (ibid). Justice Reinvestment has differed both conceptually and methodologically in the various jurisdictions in which it has been adopted. In the United States of America, the place-based focus and reinvestment in high-imprisonment communities has dropped out in favour of enacting legislation aimed at correctional reform, predominantly in probation and parole schemes. In the United Kingdom, Justice Reinvestment has been used as a general term beneath which payment by results schemes and Social Impact Bonds have operated. As such, Justice Reinvestment has become an umbrella term for a range of approaches responding to calls for ‘evidence driven’, ‘what works’ and ‘smart’ policies. The considerable fexibility in what passes for Justice Reinvestment, the tendency to blur with other concepts such as Social Impact Bonds, and the major problems facing attempts at policy transfer to different national and local contexts led Brown et al. (2016: 247) to argue that Justice Reinvestment: can be an inspiration for a form of locally based community development strategy utilizing enhanced data and identifcation of local community assets and current forms of service support, conducted initially in the communities of vulnerability which have the highest contact with the criminal justice system. In the Australian context that is exemplifed in Indigenous communities. With its local place-based focus, Justice Reinvestment has similarities with community development approaches. However, it differs in the way that it begins with identifcation of the drivers of incarceration and develops programs aimed at addressing these drivers. Further, Justice Reinvestment focuses on redirecting criminal justice spending into programs which are likely to achieve reductions in offending and imprisonment. Support for Justice Reinvestment in Australia Justice Reinvestment was introduced to the Australian policy landscape by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner (ATSISJC) in the 2009 Social Justice Report. Also in 2009, the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, in its inquiry, Access to Justice (Legal and Constitutional Affairs Reference Committee (LCARC) 2009), recommended the commencement of Justice Reinvestment pilots and an exploration of the potential for Justice Reinvestment in regional and remote Indigenous communities. These origins refect some characteristic features of Justice Reinvestment in Australia - that interest in Justice Reinvestment has come from both government and community-oriented sectors, and has largely focused on the potential of the strategy to address over-incarceration of Indigenous peoples. In 2010, a review of the New South Wales Juvenile Justice system (Noetic Solutions 2010) proposed the implementation of Justice Reinvestment strategies in the juvenile context. The Australian Government House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs lent its support to Justice Reinvestment in its report on the over-incarceration of Indigenous young people, Doing Time – Time Justice Reinvestment Brief 21, July 2017 www.indigenousjustice.gov.au Standing Council on Law and Justice Law, Crime and Community Safety Council Melanie Schwartz, Emeritus Prof. David Brown and Prof. Chris Cunneen. The Australian Justice Reinvestment Project was funded by the Australian Research Council, at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).