Reform means to change a system, institution or practice. In most cases, reform focuses on making internal changes without completely removing the existing system or replacing it with something else. Revolution, on the other hand, involves a complete and total change to the system in question—often through violent means.
The civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s resulted in reforms of laws, policies and practices that strengthened long-denied human rights protections for black people, women, migrant workers, and other marginalized groups. These reforms did not replace the existing government, but rather focused on changing its practices, and were undergirded by a sense of morality and a desire to ensure fair and equal treatment for all.
In 2020, an activist named Alaa Salah became a lightning rod for change when she launched protests in Sudan calling for the removal of President Omar al-Bashir. Her movement eventually sparked an armed revolution that overthrew Bashir. Her activism was undergirded by a sense of justice, as evidenced by her call for the prosecution of war criminals in retributive trials and truth commissions to document the harm caused by the regime’s repression.
But while reformers have begun to address the root causes of the criminal justice system’s failures, most are still stuck with a flawed “legitimacy perspective” that prioritizes microlevel procedural justice measures. This perspective ignores the structural underpinnings of tense police-community relations—specifically, racial isolation and class marginalization. Instead, it’s time to shift focus to comprehensive front-end reforms that prevent justice system involvement in the first place and build meaningful alternatives to incarceration.