Partners

Community Partnerships

The Initiative for Law, Societies, and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin involves over 11+ community partners and has engaged over 158+ community members to serve as collaborators, advisory board members, and research fellows. ILSJ works with community organizations to co-create research and educational programs. These collaborative projects with community organizations and faculty are supported by seed grants and fellowships.

Now

Mobile Court

ILSJ recently partnered with Downtown Austin Community Court to assist with evaluation and feedback on the mobile court program, particularly focusing on what are the best measures to assess legal, social, and health outcomes for clients. Principal Investigator: Anupama Kapadia (Dell Med). 

Ongoing

ILSJ Student Fellowship

• Communities for Recovery: CFR serve the community through the partnership with the District Attorney’s diversion programs to develop metrics that measure rate of recidivism, cost effectiveness and that people connected to others with shared lived experiences often result in improved quality of life. Through its systems-change initiative, Convene, CFR is leading a countywide effort ot stregthen substance use efforts in Travis County.
• LatinoJustice PRLDEF: LatinoJustice PRLDEF uses and challenges laws to create a more just and equitable society. The aim of this project is to develop a comprehensive police and advocacy history of Texas's Medically Responsive Intensive Supervision (MRIS) program to understand how and why it was created by the Texas Legislature.
• Dispute Resolution Center: The DRC provides and promotes accessible, high-quality dispute resolution services for all people in Travis County and the surrounding areas. The goal of this project is to explore how the value of mediation can be measured in monetary terms.
• Latino Texas Policy Center: LTPC is an NPO established to ensure policymaking equitably impacts the Latino community. This project assess how legislative actions in the 89th Texas regular and two special legislative sessions in 2025, advanced or hindered Latino bienestar (well-being) effected by legislative policymaking relating to the criminal justice system.  

Ending Community Homelessness Coalition

In collaboration with the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO), ILSJ supported the evaluation of an innovative program to build capacity among grassroots organizations providing supportive services for individuals experiencing homelessness. Principal Investigator: Whitney Thurman (School of Nursing).

PeaceRox

In partnership with Council on At-Risk Youth (CARY) to assess the implementation and impact of the PeaceRox program on youth outcomes including behavioral and disciplinary incidents in school; school attendacne, grades, and graduation; and engagement with the juvenile and adult legal systems. Co-Investigators: Becky Pettit (COLA) and Mark Eddy (College of Education).

Travis County Transportation Project

Through the Travis County Transformation Project (TCTP), ILSJ coordinates with the Excellence Project, Lifeworks, and the Travis County DA's Office to understand the implementation and impacts of community-based alternatives to arrest and youth detention. Principal Investigator: Fatima Varner (College of Natural Sciences).

Past

Community Safety Project

In partnership with the City of Austin, this project developed a framework to understand safety at the community level to guide programming investments, policy, and measure of progress toward creating a city with equitable safety. Principal Investigator: Becky Pettit (COLA).

Step Up Texas

STEP UP Texas is a project that brings trauma-informed and restorative practices training and implementation support to school districts, law enforcement, and the judicial system toward reducing racial and ethnic disparities in engagement with the juvenile justice system. It is partially funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and is a partnership between ILSJ, Williamson County Juvenile Services, and STARRY. Principal Investigator: Lorna Hermosura (College of Education).

Special thanks to our partners and sponsors in the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors, the College of Liberal Arts, and the College of Eduation

For all general questions, please email justice@utexas.edu.