It’s Time for Christians to Lead on Juvenile Probation Reform: An Interview with Justin Giboney

This article is part of Shared Justice’s Opportunity for Transformation series running throughout June. The series will explore one of the most urgent areas for reform within the juvenile justice system: juvenile probation. It will introduce readers to juvenile probation, its flaws, and the opportunities for government and civil society to create a juvenile justice system that is more equitable, effective, and restorative.


By Justin Giboney and Katie Thompson

KT: What is the Prayer and Action Justice Initiative, and what was the catalyst for its formation?

Justin Giboney, co-founder and president of the AND Campaign

Justin Giboney, co-founder and president of the AND Campaign

JG: It stems in one part out of the “dispute” between whether Christians should pray or act. We're making the statement that we should do both. Prayer is very important because we're dealing with things that our actions can't take care of themselves, but also that action is important, and God has placed certain things in our sphere of influence that he wants us to heal and change. So we want to say prayer is important, and action is important as well.

But initially, the impetus for this was a lot of the racialized violence that we saw in 2020, where you saw a lot of African Americans, especially, losing their lives over things when it just wasn't necessary, whether it was through police shootings, or shootings otherwise. It was just something that because of COVID-19 we had to pay attention to. Everybody's eyes were focused on that. The AND Campaign was asked by several people, “How do we speak into this? How do we apply the Bible to this conversation?” So we ended up coming up with a statement about biblical justice and how the Bible speaks into the moment. And then folks came and said, “How can we bring Christians together to address this?” We wanted to do it in a way that wasn't just bringing Christians from the Black traditional church or one church or the other, but to bring Christian leaders and Christian organizations from all demographics together to say God cares about justice. He cares about what's going on today, and we need to do something about it, because the Church needs to speak up.


Can you speak to the biblical motivations for the Church being involved with criminal and juvenile justice reform? Why is it so important?

It all starts with human dignity. Because we are all made in the image of God, we should be treated by a certain standard. And if you look through the Bible, especially when you look at the prophets, there's so many conversations and commands about justice in the social context. Whether it's Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and so on, they tell us very clearly that God cares about justice, and that he's actually appalled when his people aren't upholding justice. And in the social context, this is a covenant breach. If you look at Isaiah and Amos, they're coming not just because of idol worship, not just because of sexual immorality and things of that nature, but because of how people are being treated in the courts, because of how poor people are being treated. These are things that God cares about. We wanted to be very clear on that, because I think sometimes we can just focus on the profession of the faith, which is so important, and which is a priority. But it doesn't exclude us from engaging in it. In fact, it compels us to engage because our actions are professions [of faith] within themselves. 

“God cares about justice. He cares about what’s going on today, and we need to do something about it.”

Our children are so important. We can wait until they're broken men and broken women, or we can try to do something for them now. And so we want to be proactive, we want to make sure that they're being treated in ways, not that they don't get punishment when necessary, but in ways that are constructive, that we're not setting them up for a lifetime of going through the same cycle over and over again. I think juvenile probation reform is a very good place to start with the plan being to recognize that mistakes were made, but also push them to another path. And I think it's going to take the whole Church to make that happen.


PAJI has identified juvenile probation reform as one of its priorities. Why, and what has this work looked like so far? 

We've had some prayer sessions. Again, that’s going to be the foundation of what we're doing. We are very serious about that. So we'll have some local assemblies coming together to get demographics all over the country together, to pray together, to fellowship together, and to do that in preparation to act. Part of that preparation has just been doing the research. These are primarily local issues, not to say that there's no federal needs. But these are very much local issues, and if you address them on a local level, you can have some major impacts. And so we want to galvanize people on a national level to do the work locally within their cities and to get churches in those localities to work together. And so we’ve been doing the research so that we can create toolkits and really sound instructions for how to make these changes when it comes to juvenile justice reform. That's really the next step, getting that research out, getting those tool kits out to local leaders and local churches so that they can take it from there and really push forward some change.



Do you believe juvenile probation reform can be a bipartisan effort? Why? 

When you're talking about anything dealing with criminal matters, we've seen that become more and more of a bipartisan conversation, so that's a good start. But I think for Christians, that should be very clear. Now, if it's a human dignity issue, if it's an issue with our youth, there's no reason that it should be a partisan conversation. And even if it were, I think sometimes it's up to Christians to take it out of the partisan back and forth, and those partisan narratives and put it squarely where it should be as an issue that we should all be concerned about. And so it's an issue that affects all of us. Our children growing to be constructive parts of our society is something that's going to have an impact on all of us and making sure that they have a chance to succeed is something that is very important. So I think we just have to be really deliberate about making this something that everybody should be able to see. Whether we have to appeal to folks who are more left leaning or right leaning, we could do that through the rhetoric or the framing, but the principles are the same. And those principles should be to transcend partisanship.


For Christian young adults who want to get involved with PAJI, or more specifically juvenile probation reform, where should they begin?

For one, you can contact the AND Campaign at engage@ANDcampaign.org. Let us know where you are. If you're in a city where we're getting something started, we can get you going there. It's always helpful for folks to share the content that we're about to start releasing. And then if we're not in your city right now, maybe there's an opportunity for you to start organizing people in your city. One of the things we really want to point out that's important is that civic engagement, especially for something like this, isn't an individual endeavor. So the more that you can organize and get within institutions to do it, the more effective you're going to be. But there's plenty of opportunities, there's plenty of work to do. So if you want to, do the work. It's not like there won't be enough for you. There's a lot that needs to get done.

It is time for Christians to lead when it comes to criminal justice issues, and when it comes to justice issues in general. The Bible is very clear on it. There shouldn't be any real disputes. We can differ on policy here and there, but we shouldn't differ on how much we care about people who are in those situations and giving them a second chance.



Justin Giboney is an ordained minister, attorney, and political strategist in Atlanta, GA. He is also the co-founder and president of the AND Campaign, a coalition of biblical Christians who are determined to address the sociopolitical arena with the compassion and conviction of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He served as the co-chair of Obama for America’s Gen44-Atlanta initiative, and in 2012 and 2016 Georgia’s 5th congressional district elected him as a delegate for the Democratic National Convention. Giboney also served on the Urban League of Greater Atlanta Board of Directors and has written op-eds for publications such as Christianity Today and The Hill.

Katie Thompson is the Program Director of Shared Justice, the Center for Public Justice's program for Christian college students and young adults. In 2015 Thompson co-authored Unleashing Opportunity: Why Escaping Poverty Requires a Shared Vision of Justice with Michael Gerson and Stephanie Summers. She also serves on behalf of CPJ as a steering committee member of Faith for Just Lending, a coalition dedicated to ending predatory payday lending. Thompson holds a Master’s of Public Policy from The Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University.


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