Fighting Fear with Clay, Coffee, and Community: Rethinking Justice at the Local Level

 Most people support criminal justice reform in principle, until that principle becomes a proposal in their neighborhood. This summer, as I’ve traveled from Belgium to the Czech Republic and now Portugal researching alternatives to traditional incarceration, I’ve come to understand why. My thesis focuses on small-scale detention houses: community-integrated facilities designed to support rehabilitation and reintegration for incarcerated people. Through 19 interviews with policymakers, facility directors, and justice advocates so far, I’ve been investigating what makes these models work and why local resistance often blocks their implementation, despite promising evidence.  

The short answer is fear. The longer answer lies in deeply rooted punitive philosophies, public misperceptions, and the uneasy balancing act between punishment, deterrence, and rehabilitation. 

The first half of my summer was based in Brussels, where policy debates unfold in multiple languages around shared frites (fries), and justice echoes through public conversation. Now in Lisbon, I’ve found a different tone: more subdued, less politicized, and shaped by a quiet cultural emphasis on social solidarity. But that doesn’t mean people are talking more openly about incarceration. In fact, I’ve found that it’s quite the opposite. The silence around prisons here—what they are, who they serve, and why they matter—reminds me of the quiet dominance prisons also hold in United States culture. 

In each place I visit, one pattern repeats: NIMBYism. “Not In My Backyard” resistance is the most persistent barrier to turning innovative facilities from theoretical policy to implemented reality. NIMBYism, in this context, is the reflexive resistance from local residents or politicians who may support justice reform in theory, but panic when the reality of a facility opening in their own neighborhood hits. One mayor in Belgium initially agreed to host a detention house until he realized “residents” meant people still serving sentences, and his local constituents began to protest. In another town, residents raised objections about increased policing, drug use, and declining property values, but these concerns were more reflective of unfamiliarity than fact. 

And yet, the facts are pretty clear. The detention houses I’ve visited typically host between 8 and 30 individuals, primarily for low-level offenses like theft or drug possession. These facilities have no armed guards, no perimeter walls, and no record of violence in the communities where they operate. Residents often take part in volunteer projects or hold jobs outside during the day, like helping at local clean-ups or working normal jobs in restaurants, before returning home at night. One facility director told me that within a year, neighbors knew the residents by name and admitted they’d initially been wrong to assume the worst. 

Still, fear is powerful. And NIMBYism is not irrational. For people who’ve only seen prisons on crime shows or read about them in headlines, the idea of a prison-like facility in a residential area, often without bars or fences, can feel risky.  

Popular culture and media narratives play a large role in shaping paranoia-based public and political perception around prison reform. But the media can also be part of the solution. Several directors told me about the role that storytelling and transparency have played in changing public opinion. One invited local journalists to a community dinner co-hosted by residents. Others used social media to share the real impacts of their work, highlighting volunteer projects, spotlighting successful reentry stories, or simply introducing staff and residents as people, not just hidden statistics. 

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One of the most compelling examples I encountered was in Lisbon. I visited a ceramics workshop run by RESHAPE, a nonprofit that partners with local prisons to offer weekly pottery classes to incarcerated individuals. In an open, light-filled studio in downtown Lisbon, participants learn how to make and glaze bowls, mugs, and tiles that are later sold both locally and online (they ship internationally!). Some go on to full-time employment post-release. All gain something less visible but equally critical: purpose, stability, and a bridge between prison and community. 

For me, the visit brought together many threads I’d been tracing all summer. Creative expression, work with dignity, and human connection aren’t soft add-ons to justice, they’re the foundation of it. Reentry efforts are not only about avoiding reoffending; they’re about supporting people in building a life worth returning to and investing in. 

Across Europe, I’ve seen variations of this approach: detention houses connected to public cafés; partnerships with nursing homes where residents assist with daily routines; recycling programs that serve both internal and external communities. These social enterprise models challenge the isolation that feeds fear and instead create daily, visible points of trust. When serving a sentence is absolutely necessary, it should be done in a way that is productive for those directly involved and society as a whole, instead of being a harmful and hidden process. 

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This became even clearer during my visit to Coimbra, a university city in Portugal, where a new transition house is currently being developed. The facility will serve individuals leaving prison who don’t have stable housing or support networks, arguably one of the most vulnerable groups in the system. By placing the house in a real neighborhood, within walking distance of public transit, healthcare, and job opportunities, the project intentionally avoids the isolation that often reinforces fear and exclusion. Staff aren’t forced to commute to remote facilities, and residents remain connected to the everyday rhythms of community life. When we hide people away, we make them easier to fear. But when they live among us, working jobs, running errands, engaging in volunteering, they don’t become less accountable; they become more visible, more understood, and more fully part of a shared responsibility for safety and progress. 

Over lunch with future staff, we discussed how to present the project to skeptical neighbors and strategized ways to engage local officials. It was a reminder that meaningful advocacy isn’t just about policy design or approval, it’s about building the trust, understanding, and relationships necessary to make implementation possible. 

As I wrap up my time in Lisbon and reflect on the places I’ve visited, I keep returning to the question of how these ideas translate across borders, even in contexts more different than the shift from Brussels to Lisbon. I’ve come to see that the real question isn’t whether the detention house model can be replicated, but whether the principles behind it of connection, transparency, and trust can be meaningfully embedded within justice systems that were built to isolate and shame. These values can’t simply be imported or legislated. But what I’ve seen this summer in ceramics studios and neighborhood cafés, in open hallways and shared meals, suggests that it’s possible to cultivate them.