(From left) Tom Barbour and Jerald Hess of the Virginia Holistic Justice Initiative (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Tom Barbour’s job used to be persuading a judge that a defendant was guilty. He was an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Richmond, and though he worked on plea agreements that reduced jail sentences, a successful argument often would mean time behind bars for the defendant. But it troubled Barbour to see people incarcerated for nonviolent crimes.
“For violent offenders, the public safety benefit of incarceration is keeping them out of the community,” Barbour says. “For people who are nonviolent … the public safety benefit of incarceration doesn’t exist.”
This belief inspired him to start a nonprofit dedicated to helping the latter group: the Virginia Holistic Justice Initiative (VAHJI). A Marine Corps veteran, Barbour left the Richmond commonwealth’s attorney’s office in 2018. Now he leads the VAHJI from an office in Capital One’s 1717 Innovation Center, a modern workspace on East Cary Street shared with other startups.
Barbour, 34, co-founded the organization in 2018 with public defender Jerald Hess. They assembled five additional board members, secured funding and gained 501(c)(3) status from the IRS. This year, the organization is preparing to hire its first case worker.
VAHJI has two goals: to serve as a link between clients and community resources, and to advocate for legislation to end incarceration of nonviolent offenders.
“When you incarcerate someone, you create a risk of recidivism,” Barbour explains. “You’re taking them out of their housing situation, their employment situation, you’re taking them away from social contact. You insert a lot of stress into the situation.”
“For people who are nonviolent … the public safety benefit of incarceration doesn’t exist.” —Tom Barbour, Virginia Holistic Justice Initiative
A better system, VAHJI organizers believe, would be to hold a hearing on a defendant’s risk to the community, after trial and before sentencing. A person who is not deemed “an unmanageable risk of physical violence” would be ineligible for incarceration. Legislation mandating such a hearing would have to originate in the General Assembly, and Barbour estimates passage of such a measure could take five to 10 years.
“This system is not going to change in the way we’re describing without long-term engagement with local elected leaders,” he says.
Meanwhile, VAHJI will work to support the kinds of plea agreements Barbour once designed as a criminal prosecutor.
“I would come up with proposed alternative plea agreements,” Barbour explains. “For example, I might ask a defendant to check in with different homeless shelters as part of the agreement. But if the person couldn’t access those resources, it wasn’t an agreement that could be fulfilled.”
The initiative’s case worker will meet clients and connect them with resources for mental health and substance abuse care and to address unemployment, lack of transportation and housing instability.
VAHJI board member and Virginia Commonwealth University English professor David Coogan runs “Writing Your Way Out,” a program that redirects low-level offenders to a writing class. Upon signing a plea agreement, a defendant must take and pass a self-critical writing class instead of paying a fee or serving time in jail.
“If someone is charged with something like theft or trespassing, and it stems from mental illness or addiction, the system just incarcerates these people, and their mental illness or addiction is never treated,” Coogan says. “What’s needed is not more criminalization of these issues, but more humanization.”
