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A future beyond racialised criminal legal system harm - where communities are free, safe, and thriving through care, repair, collective wellbeing, and community power.
Our Vision
OUR STORY SO FAR
Harm to Healing grew from the work of communities and organisers who, for years, have been resisting harm and building care in the face of the criminal legal system. Black communities in Britain have long been at the sharpest edge of policing, prisons, surveillance, psychiatric detention, and immigration enforcement - and have responded not only with resistance, but with care, healing, and collective survival.n
In 2024, the Harm to Healing Collective was formed to guide the seed phase of this initiative. Our core collective brings together Black-led organisations working at the frontline of racial injustice and resistance. experience, expertise, and decades of resistance to state racism, we are both dreamers and builders - envisioning and creating community systems of care and justice that bring true repair, accountability, and support beyond prisons, policing, and surveillance.
In 2023, the Harm to Healing Report was launched, capturing the urgency of this work and the voices of those on the frontline. The report centred Black-led, “by and for” organisations, ensuring that analysis, insights, and solutions came directly from those most impacted by criminal legal system harm. It affirmed what we have always known: that our communities carry both the truth of the harm and the power to lead transformation.
In 2023, the Harm to Healing Report was launched, capturing the urgency of this work and the voices of those on the frontline. The report centred Black-led, “by and for” organisations, ensuring that analysis, insights, and solutions came directly from those most impacted by criminal legal system harm. It affirmed what we have always known: that our communities carry both the truth of the harm and the power to lead transformation.
In 2024, the Harm to Healing Collective was formed to guide the seed phase of this initiative. Our core collective brings together Black-led organisations working at the frontline of racial injustice and resistance. experience, expertise, and decades of resistance to state racism, we are both dreamers and builders - envisioning and creating community systems of care and justice that bring true repair, accountability, and support beyond prisons, policing, and surveillance.
In 2023, the Harm to Healing Report was launched, capturing the urgency of this work and the voices of those on the frontline. The report centred Black-led, “by and for” organisations, ensuring that analysis, insights, and solutions came directly from those most impacted by criminal legal system harm. It affirmed what we have always known: that our communities carry both the truth of the harm and the power to lead transformation.
In 2024, the Harm to Healing Collective was formed to guide the seed phase of this initiative. Our core collective brings together Black-led organisations working at the frontline of racial injustice and resistance. experience, expertise, and decades of resistance to state racism, we are both dreamers and builders - envisioning and creating community systems of care and justice that bring true repair, accountability, and support beyond prisons, policing, and surveillance.
In 2024, the Harm to Healing Collective was formed to guide the seed phase of this initiative. Our core collective brings together Black-led organisations working at the frontline of racial injustice and resistance. experience, expertise, and decades of resistance to state racism, we are both dreamers and builders - envisioning and creating community systems of care and justice that bring true repair, accountability, and support beyond prisons, policing, and surveillance.
In 2024, the Harm to Healing Collective was formed to guide the seed phase of this initiative. Our core collective brings together Black-led organisations working at the frontline of racial injustice and resistance. experience, expertise, and decades of resistance to state racism, we are both dreamers and builders - envisioning and creating community systems of care and justice that bring true repair, accountability, and support beyond prisons, policing, and surveillance.
To build the power and capacity of communities most impacted by racialised criminal legal system harm - learning, organising, and healing together to resist state violence, eradicate harm, and build community-led systems of care, safety, and justice.
Our Mission
WE BELIEVE
The criminal legal system does not create safety - it creates harm.
Policing, prisons, surveillance, psychiatric detention, and immigration enforcement are rooted in racial injustice and continue to wound our communities. We believe our communities already hold the answers. For generations, we have resisted criminalisation and built infrastructures of survival, care, and healing. This legacy of resistance and repair is the foundation of Harm to Healing.
Those most impacted must lead the way.
Transformation cannot be handed down from above - it must be created from the ground up, rooted in community leadership and collective power.
Healing is not a destination but a journey.
To heal, we must dismantle the systems that harm us and build new ones that nurture wellbeing, freedom, and justice. We believe in the power of imagination. Together, we can move beyond racialised criminal legal system harm into a future where safety is born from care, justice means repair, and our communities are free, thriving, and powerful.
This is the path from harm to healing.
Harm to Healing is grounded in values forged through generations of resistance, survival, and imagination.
OUR VALUES
We are community-led and rooted in self-determination, building on the wisdom and leadership of those most impacted. We are visionary and intergenerational, daring to imagine beyond prisons, policing, and surveillance while creating space for elders and young people to lead together.
We embrace experimentation, diligence, relationships, responsibility, belief, devotion, intersectionality, and justice - values that keep us grounded in love, sharpen our practice, and expand our struggle. Together, these values guide us to resist racial injustice and to build new infrastructures of care, justice, and repair - moving us from harm to healing.
We are rooted in a politics of care, healing, and joy, knowing that liberation requires rest, repair, and collective wellbeing. We are committed to being of value to our communities, moving with integrity and accountability, and owning our narrative in the face of systems that distort or erase us.
We are rooted in a politics of care, healing, and joy, knowing that liberation requires rest, repair, and collective wellbeing. We are committed to being of value to our communities, moving with integrity and accountability, and owning our narrative in the face of systems that distort or erase us.
We embrace experimentation, diligence, relationships, responsibility, belief, devotion, intersectionality, and justice - values that keep us grounded in love, sharpen our practice, and expand our struggle. Together, these values guide us to resist racial injustice and to build new infrastructures of care, justice, and repair - moving us from harm to healing.
We are rooted in a politics of care, healing, and joy, knowing that liberation requires rest, repair, and collective wellbeing. We are committed to being of value to our communities, moving with integrity and accountability, and owning our narrative in the face of systems that distort or erase us.
We embrace experimentation, diligence, relationships, responsibility, belief, devotion, intersectionality, and justice - values that keep us grounded in love, sharpen our practice, and expand our struggle. Together, these values guide us to resist racial injustice and to build new infrastructures of care, justice, and repair - moving us from harm to healing.
We embrace experimentation, diligence, relationships, responsibility, belief, devotion, intersectionality, and justice - values that keep us grounded in love, sharpen our practice, and expand our struggle. Together, these values guide us to resist racial injustice and to build new infrastructures of care, justice, and repair - moving us from harm to healing.
We embrace experimentation, diligence, relationships, responsibility, belief, devotion, intersectionality, and justice - values that keep us grounded in love, sharpen our practice, and expand our struggle. Together, these values guide us to resist racial injustice and to build new infrastructures of care, justice, and repair - moving us from harm to healing.
READ THE REPORT Harm to Healing: Resisting Racial Injustice in the Criminal Legal System of England and Wales
By Temi Mwale & Patrick Williams
THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE CENTRALISES COMMUNITY
Launched on 30 Nov 2023, the Harm to Healing report explores the purpose, role and experiences of Black-led ‘by and for’ groups and organisations that are working at the intersections of racial injustice and the criminal legal system of England and Wales.
TOWARDS JUSTICE
In this video series, you can hear directly from groups driving systemic change and building towards justice.
Part 1 Contributors: Temi Mwale (4FRONT), Marcia Rigg (United Families and Friends Campaign), Stafford Scott (Tottenham Rights), Katrina Ffrench (UNJUST UK).
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