MEET SABLE
Sometimes somebody crosses our path who isn't simply talking about what's wrong with the justice system. They're trying to build something that might make part of it better.
Meet Sable, founder of Raise the Justice Bar in Oregon and the newest contributor to the Prison Project.
Sable is building an organization around a deceptively simple idea:
Raise the Justice Bar is just getting started, but Sable says she has been developing the idea for the past year. Her vision is to provide free justice advocates for people under 25 — independent guides who are not prosecutors or defense attorneys and who do not pretend to replace lawyers.
Plenty of adults have trouble understanding the courts, deadlines, hearings, terminology, paperwork and decisions surrounding a legal case.
Imagine being young, frightened and suddenly expected to understand all of it.
What if we reached young people BEFORE they needed us?
Sable also wants to work through schools, libraries and community education — giving young people basic knowledge about the justice system before the day that knowledge becomes desperately important.
Sable eventually wants to pursue legislation in Oregon requiring an independent third-party justice advocate in situations involving young people — someone whose role is focused on making sure the young person understands their rights and the process unfolding around them.
She believes such a safeguard could help vulnerable young people while also addressing some of the pressure surrounding Oregon's public-defense system.
The Prison Project wasn't created because all the easy problems had already been solved.
What particularly caught our attention about Sable wasn't that she claimed to have all the answers.
She didn't.
She identified a problem, proposed an idea for addressing it, and started building something.
Oregon has a new voice at the Prison Project.
We're going to give Sable room to tell us what she's seeing in Oregon — in juvenile justice, public defense, post-conviction proceedings, reentry and the places where rights written on paper don't necessarily become meaningful rights in the real world.
We're also going to learn from one another.
Sable is building something where she lives.
Prison Project is building something that reaches far beyond one state.
There are places where those missions intersect.
We're interested in finding them.
WELCOME TO THE PRISON PROJECT, SABLE.
We're glad you're here.
we're putting you to work. 🙂
We want your first article.
Don't worry about making it perfect.
Bring us your experience.
Bring us your ideas.
Bring us your voice.
Because movements aren't built by everybody saying the same thing.
They're built when people who give a damn bring what they know to the table — and then get to work.
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