A phrase borrowed from somewhere else
I first heard the phrase “nothing about us without us” in a disability rights context, long before I started paying close attention to justice policy. It stuck with me because it names something so obvious it almost feels embarrassing to say out loud: the people most affected by a decision should have a real hand in making it. And yet in community and justice work, we violate this principle constantly, often while congratulating ourselves for doing good.
I’ve sat in rooms where a new victim services program was unveiled with real enthusiasm, built by well-meaning professionals who had read the research, consulted the literature, and still somehow never asked an actual victim what they needed. I’ve seen reentry initiatives designed without a single formerly incarcerated person in the room until the ribbon-cutting. This isn’t malice. It’s habit. Institutions are built to consult experts, and somewhere along the way we decided that lived experience doesn’t count as expertise.
Where the pattern shows up
This isn’t a fringe problem. It shows up in small ways and large ones, and once you start noticing it, you can’t stop.
- Policy drafted in isolation: Legislation on victim compensation written without input from people who’ve actually tried to navigate the claims process.
- Programs evaluated by the wrong metrics: Success measured in completion rates or cost savings rather than whether participants felt the process was fair or healing.
- Advisory boards that advise nothing: Community members invited to listen to presentations rather than shape them.
- Language that erases agency: People described as “cases” or “populations” rather than as neighbors with opinions worth weighing.
Each of these is small on its own. Together, they add up to a system that talks constantly about the people it serves while rarely listening to them.
Why this happens even with good intentions
I don’t think most people in this field are indifferent. I think they’re overworked, under-resourced, and operating inside structures that reward speed and measurable outcomes over slow, messy, democratic process. It is genuinely faster to write a program on your own than to convene the people it will affect, hear disagreement, revise, and hear disagreement again. Inclusion takes time. Time is the one thing most institutions claim they don’t have.
There’s also a quieter discomfort at work. Letting affected people shape a response to harm means giving up a measure of control. It means sitting with the possibility that your well-researched plan might be wrong, or at least incomplete, in ways only someone who lived through the harm could tell you. That’s humbling. Humility isn’t always rewarded in professional settings built around expertise and credentials.
What it costs us to skip this step
When we design justice responses without the people they’re meant to serve, we tend to build things that look good on paper and fail quietly in practice. A victim notification system that technically works but leaves people feeling managed rather than respected. A diversion program that reduces recidivism statistics while participants describe the experience as humiliating. The data can look fine while the human experience underneath it is hollow. That gap between what we measure and what people actually feel is, in my experience, one of the most persistent and under-discussed failures in this field.
What it looks like when we get it right
I’ve also seen the alternative, and it’s not mysterious or expensive so much as it is intentional. It usually starts with a willingness to slow down at the beginning of a project rather than at the end, when consultation becomes a formality.
- Co-design from the start: Bringing affected community members into the room before a single draft exists, not after.
- Paying for participation: Treating lived experience as labor worth compensating, not a favor people owe the system.
- Building in real veto power: Giving community voices actual authority to say no, not just the chance to comment.
- Measuring dignity, not just outcomes: Asking participants directly whether they felt heard and respected, and taking the answer seriously even when it’s uncomfortable.
None of this guarantees a perfect program. But it tends to produce something sturdier, because it’s been tested against the only standard that ultimately matters: whether it actually works for the people living inside it.
A practice, not a slogan
I worry sometimes that “nothing about us without us” has become one of those phrases people nod along to without changing anything about how they work. It’s easy to put on a flyer. It’s harder to build into a budget, a timeline, a governance structure. But that’s where the real test lives. Inclusion that only happens when it’s convenient isn’t inclusion; it’s optics.
I keep coming back to this idea because so much of what I write about in these notes depends on it. Restorative practice, victim support, reentry work, policy reform — none of it holds up for long if it’s built over the heads of the people it’s meant to serve. The work is slower when you do it this way. I’ve come to believe it’s also the only version of the work that actually lasts.