Faith in the Valley’s work to eliminate unnecessary police involvement and save teens from life-ruining sentences
Mass incarceration, police violence and related policing issues most greatly impact impoverished communities and people of color. Faith in the Valley (FIV), a faith-based grassroots community organization based in Stockton, is doing its part to combat these problems in the Central Valley. The organization’s efforts start at the beginning—affecting how authorities are alerted to crises in the community—and carry on into courtrooms.
“We are working to empower excluded communities and those that others have given up on or never had a chance in the first place,” says Pastor Curtis Smith, FIV’s executive director.
“We are looking at how individuals and communities can solve problems for themselves and how we can create systems and structures to hold and heal people through community-generated efforts and alternatives to incarceration,” he continues. “The current carceral system is designed to rob people of their agency and humanity. Through people power and faith-based organizing, we seek to confront and bring solutions to these systemic problems.”
“We are looking at how individuals and communities can solve problems for themselves and how we can create systems and structures to hold and heal people through community-generated efforts and alternatives to incarceration.”
Pastor Curtis Smith, Executive Director, Faith in the Valley
To those ends, FIV has a transformative justice team of organizers dedicated to investing in leadership formation among system-impacted youth and adults and to transform public safety. “The team’s focus is on decarceration, alternatives to policing, community reinvestment, and violence reduction,” Smith says. “Through their efforts, both past and present, change is happening in the valley.”
Among FIV’s justice efforts is the C.A.L.L. Stockton initiative, launched in 2020 and aimed to establish a new emergency response system that doesn’t rely on police responding to crises that other personnel may be better suited to address. This effort led to the formation of Stockton’s Mobile Community Response Team (MCRT), a team of outreach specialists, licensed clinical social workers and medical assistants who respond to appropriate emergencies. Smith says this program has deescalated countless conflicts and helped thousands of residents facing mental health crises and other challenges to access needed support.
Other FIV efforts include working directly within the justice system, stopping juvenile transfers to adult court and empowering families to advocate for alternative approaches to punishment via “participatory defense.” This involves providing humanizing testimony and information about the teen’s life and circumstances to the court and collaborating with juvenile defense attorneys.
“So far, we’ve prevented more than 270 years of incarceration among youth in Fresno and provided training to expand the approach to San Joaquin county,” Smith says.
Smith brings over two decades of faith and community-based organizing and systems change experience to his leadership at FIV. He was introduced to organizing and activism as a youth pastor in Sacramento.
“I saw the tremendous impact it had when youth from historically excluded communities were introduced to power,” he said. “Since then I returned home to the Central Valley, and have dedicated my career to building power and giving voice to young people, their families and overlooked, low-income communities vulnerable to crime and mass incarceration, homelessness and poverty.”
Efor more information on Faith in the Valley, go to faithinthevalley.org.
