The Holistic Justice Challenge

The Holistic Justice Challenge occurred in 2023 after David Register of the Bard Prison Initiative introduced Dr. John Gannon, executive director of the Global Justice Resource Center, to Dr. John Patrick, Co-Director of the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Debate Team. Gannon was interested in creating educational programming that would expand who is included in American public discourse regarding the criminal justice system and Patrick was interested in having his students think more holistically in terms of how the effects of government operations ripple through society as a system. The intersection of these interested gave birth to the Holistic Justice Challenge.

Victims, prisoners, ex-convicts, correctional officers, administrators, police, judges, and attorneys are routinely the focus of criminal justice system discourse, however, there are many underrepresented stakeholders that whose lives are touched by the criminal justice system through no fault of their own. When community members are incarcerated, the effects of their incarceration are not only felt by the incarcerated individual, their victim(s), and criminal justice system employees; families, neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, friendships, and other societal institutions and connections all feel the incarcerated person’s absence, yet rarely are their interests represented in our public discourse. This event challenges participating teams to identify 2 stakeholder groups to prioritize for inclusion in our criminal justice system discourse and argue why their prioritization should be preferred to alternatives. The goal is not to indicate that any stakeholders are unworthy of consideration, but that prioritizing specific stakeholder interests would result in a more just world compared to the status quo and possible alternatives.