There is a longstanding need for anti-racist reform across a variety of systems in the U.S., and especially the legal system. In response to the urgent need for action, we introduce STYLE, a theory- and research-driven framework for professionals to address racism stemming from and perpetuated by the legal system. The framework aims to promote development and refinement of existing structures, policies, practices, and resources to achieve a culture of anti-racism. STYLE is an acronym that stands for: Self-examination, Talk freely and openly, Yield time and space, Learn about racism, and Evaluate policies and practices (see Figure 1). STYLE offers a framework for professionals to integrate anti-racist practices and policies directly into their work.

STYLE was developed collaboratively among people who have lived experience in the legal system, professionals working within the system, and system reform advocates, and it expands on previous work by Fix et al. (2022). Our team includes people who are survivors of violent crime, who have direct experience in the legal system, and who have served people in and impacted by the legal system (these categories are not exclusive). The STYLE framework was informed by our direct experiences and the experiences and insights of individuals with lived experience.

Altogether, STYLE was borne from the need for psychologists to address racism more directly in their work (Fix et al., 2022), and has since been updated to include strategies for anyone who works in the psychological or public health fields to adopt. The first iteration of STYLE came from a group of psychologists interested in embedding anti-racist practices into their work. The first author developed the initial acronym to help psychologists think about racism in policing and how it impacts children and adolescents in pediatric clinical settings (see Fix et al., 2022). The first author then developed a set of associated skills to encompass the assigned framework areas, and the second author helped refine the definitions of each STYLE component. Then, additional partners interested in addressing anti-racism at a structural level were brought into the conversation, including coauthors and other colleagues who could help emphasize lived experiences. Through ongoing meetings, our team continues to work on testing the recommended process, and evaluating (and refining) the STYLE framework by recruiting a representative sample of people working in psychology and related fields (e.g., within distinct roles, contexts, demographic characteristics and social identifiers).

We intentionally center the implementation of STYLE within the context of a cultural humility framework, such that life-long learning, critical self-reflection, recognizing and challenging power imbalances, and promoting institutional accountability are prioritized in reaching systemic change (Tervalon and Murray-García, 1998). Structural racism is embedded in our society, encoded into laws and practices, influencing how we are raised as children, how we see and interact with the world, and how we are trained as professionals (Bailey et al., 2017; Eberhardt, 2020). Accordingly, we briefly discuss how to use STYLE to address structural, intrapersonal, and interpersonal racism. We further highlight how such work can promote equity in the legal system, and emphasize how the STYLE skills can be applied more broadly.

Figure 1 provides an accountability tool for implementing STYLE, using a cultural humility framework, as well as ways to maintain momentum in the ongoing process of developing STYLE. For each individual (and aspect of STYLE), commitment to implementation (i.e., precontemplation, contemplation, action, maintenance, termination; Prochaska, 2020) may differ. We strongly encourage the use of this monitoring form or a similar mechanism to track progress and setbacks in addition to having an accountability partner. Below we focus on how to implement each STYLE component with contextual examples focused on anti-Black racism within the legal system. Table 1 describe the STYLE application across six distinct yet overlapping contexts: advocacy and public policy, clinical care, community service, research, teaching, and training and supervision.

In efforts toward effective anti-racism work and systemic change, self-examination and critical self-reflection are crucial in the areas of individual experiences of oppression and privilege, individually held biases, and personal reasons for inaction (Lai et al., 2014, 2016; Forscher et al., 2019; Burnett-Bowie et al., 2022). To accomplish this, individuals must raise their critical consciousness and strength and resilience to counter oppression (French et al., 2020). We must also work alongside people with lived experience (DeBlaere et al., 2019) – including those with so-called violent offenses and those occupying positions of power within the legal system (e.g., police, judges, correctional officers). Individuals must also engage in self-examination which could lead to a radical healing process that simultaneously recognizes the harms from oppression and promotes faith in justice (French et al., 2020).

In research, practice, and advocacy work, structural racism and its impact on Black communities must be directly named and addressed, and certainly not limited to observational work demonstrating race-based health inequities. Lensmire et al. (2013) explains how the discourse on privilege has largely become about White confession rather than anything resulting in meaningful outcomes; the consistent emphasis on merely “naming” racism runs that same risk. Table 1 identifies ways to talk openly about racism across contexts and provides a model of implementing STYLE for clients, students, mentees, colleagues, and more. Historically, this work has been done by Black community leaders and researchers, and there is a need for ALL who do work in psychology and related fields to communicate openly and effectively about structural racism using evidence-based approaches that ultimately support and promote policies that could promote racial equity (Davey, 2009).

People with lived experience in the legal system are often an overlooked and undervalued group and tend to be excluded from professional psychology and public health fields due to “unjust systemic issues in education and training” (Wilcox and Taylor, 2022, p. 1). Professionals working with community members who have been impacted by the legal system have an ethical imperative to get proximate to these issues. Mosley et al. (2021) co-constructed a model of Critical Consciousness of Anti-Black Racism entailing three developmental processes to be used. We recommend using these processes when yielding time to anti-racism: witnessing, processing, and acting critically against anti-Black racism. In brief, we encourage individuals to witness racism in the legal system (e.g., serving on jury duty or sitting in a courtroom for a day), process such experiences with individuals who are outside of the witnessed interaction and who are directly impacted (e.g., with colleagues or your accountability partner), and take action against anti-Black racism using your own skillsets (see suggested actions in Mosley et al., 2021 Williams et al., 2023; and Table 1).

Even among those not working directly in the legal system, it is important to recognize that many individuals we interact with will have been impacted by the legal system. Many individuals have negative experiences with police, are survivors of crime, have an incarcerated peer or family member, or know someone who is system-impacted; Black communities are frequently overrepresented in the system (Alexander, 2020) and rates of involvement may be underreported given associated stigma. Some people avoid reporting crime – especially acts involving interpersonal violence, due to understandable worries about legal ramifications and mistrust in police (Brunson and Wade, 2019). Additionally, people may have mistrust in psychologists and thus may not disclose or report traumatic events to them (Whaley, 2001). Through developing a knowledge base of the legal system and a working understanding of what system involvement could look like, individuals can ask deeper and more targeted questions, regardless of how closely one works to the legal system.

To target the problem of structural racism, it is necessary to gain relevant knowledge and develop a suitable toolkit. Structural competency is important but often overlooked in training (Metzl and Hansen, 2014). It entails five principles: (1) recognizing structures that shape how people are responded to in a system, (2) developing extra-clinical language of structure, (3) rearticulating cultural presentations in structural terms, (4) understanding structural interventions, and (5) developing structural humility (see Metzl and Hansen, 2014 for a more comprehensive overview and Table 1 for recommendations across contexts).

To truly immerse oneself into anti-racist learning, one must engage and sit with people in the struggle. Researchers are encouraged to invite the wisdom and lived experiences of researchers, community members, and community organizations from Black, Indigenous, and Latine communities. It is particularly important to foster collaborative relationships and learn from people who have lived experience in the legal system as equal partners in psychology and public health research (CDC, 2011 Guerrero Ramirez et al., 2022). Through community-based participatory research (Israel et al., 1998) and equitable engagement of people with lived experience (Guerrero Ramirez et al., 2022), it is more likely that targets to address structural racism in psychology and public health research will be responsive to the community’s immediate needs and priorities.

An example of a topic that one might learn about is how members of Black communities experience a disproportionate rate of legal system involvement due to structural racism within systems of housing, employment, income, health care, education, and media. Inequities in housing (which can contribute to inequities in the legal system) in turn stem from policies such as redlining and practices such as the forced removal of Indigenous peoples from their lands in the U.S. (Hankin and Abela, 2005; see also the LANDBACK movement and Native Land). By learning about the interconnected nature of structural inequities across systems and associated health and economic costs, psychologists and other professionals can build the capacity to impact change.

Measurement of structural racism is particularly important in the fields of psychology and public health (Groos et al., 2018). Investigations of legal system inequities can identify pathways through which specific policies or patterns of policy enforcement result in disparate outcomes. It is especially important that White practitioners and professionals trust the perspectives of Black people with lived experience and recognize the power imbalances inherent in this work, from therapeutic to research settings. Key health inequities in the legal system should be recognized as relevant to psychology and other health professionals. Mental and physical health care are generally accessible to all persons in the carceral system, but the care received is often limited and outdated (Young and Badowski, 2017). People in the carceral system present with higher morbidity and greater physical and mental health care needs compared with those outside of the carceral system (Gottfried and Christopher, 2017; Nowotny et al., 2017), and there are racial inequities in these problems (Nowotny et al., 2017). Health problems (Nowotny et al., 2017) and housing insecurity (Pettit, 2012) frequently persist upon reentry into the community. In all, the interconnected systems in which people might experience structural racism contribute to health disparities that should be learned and addressed in psychology and other related professions.

Professionals in psychology and related fields must be knowledgeable about problems experienced – and strengths embodied – by individuals in Black-, Indigenous-, and Latine-identified communities (see Table 1 for recommendations on how to use this knowledge). In advocacy work, learning about current policy and legislative strategies to address and dismantle racism is critical (Reskin, 2012). Harmful policies including those that allow for segregation of resources and racial equity policies that create group advantage must be identified. To promote best practices in policy work, professionals in psychology and public health must consider which systems are receiving investment of time and resources alongside evidence about which systems should receive investment of time and resources. Such education is especially important to avoid repeating policy mistakes which, even if inadvertent, can and do have devastating consequences on communities for generations.

A comprehensive social justice model requires community activist perspectives and engagement from people with lived experience; advocacy across multiple levels (local, state, national, international); use of multiple methods to connect with members of the public (e.g., op-eds, podcasts, research briefs) in addition to typical academic products; and workshops in public health coursework specific to policy and implementation and dissemination of systems-level interventions (DeBlaere et al., 2019). Further, inclusion of key interconnected systems that are subject to structural racism (e.g., education, health care, housing, legal) (Bailey et al., 2017) and examination of critical explanatory (and mutable) factors is needed.

In research that is explicitly quantifying racial disparities among people in the legal system, a systems approach is necessary (McLeroy et al., 1988; Bronfenbrenner, 1992; Reskin, 2012). There is a tendency for policies and practices that impact Black communities to be more punitive and focused on social control. For example, through the examination of policies spanning school pathways to the legal system, researchers can better understand how policies must target multiple interconnected systems to effectively address structural racism, such as disproportionate involvement in the legal system. Illustratively, criminalized disciplinary approaches are more frequently implemented in predominantly Black schools (Ramey, 2015). In Black communities, there are inequitable and harsher policing practices (Hyland et al., 2015); this contributes to significantly more Black people being incarcerated per capita than any other racial group, despite only being 13% of the U.S. population (Puzzanchera and Hockenberry, 2020). Disproportionately harsh – even if inadvertently so – responses to citizens living in Black communities indicate where we need to target our energy. In response, researchers could examine policies specific to racial equity, and advocacy work should promote legislation such as required racial equity impact statements (Council Office of Racial Equity, 2021). This would function as an equity litmus test.

Ultimately, to do this work, researchers (including those in training) must learn: (1) what prevention and intervention techniques exist that target racism and its negative psychological and public health effects (and the effectiveness of these interventions), (2) what measures and methods are needed to prevent racism and its negative health effects, and (3) how psychology and other health professions might better examine racism and its negative health effects via implementing population-based surveys. In addition, development of policy evaluation and analytic skills should be incorporated as an elective for advanced statistical coursework requirements in doctoral-level psychology curricula (Fischer and Miller, 2017).

There are existing interventions targeting structural racism with promising effects on community-level health that researchers could evaluate independently, expand upon outcomes examined, or modify to address additional concerns specific to legal system involvement. For example, place-based, multisector, equity-oriented initiatives like Purpose Built Communities and Promise Neighborhoods encourage large-scale interventions that focus on changes to housing to reduce structural inequities (Bailey et al., 2017). Interventions focused on educating and employing people (especially Black people) are particularly effective at reducing recidivism and are a cost-effective alternative to incarceration (Visher et al., 2008; Davis et al., 2013) but more evaluation work is needed.

Immediate next steps for strengthening and promoting the refinement of the STYLE framework are underway, though we encourage others to also test and improve upon the STYLE framework we propose. There is a need to examine the data on how effectively STYLE can translate to behavior change and ultimately contribute to change that promotes health equity among the populations with whom we work. Evaluative work of STYLE will include data collection from professionals about their perceptions of STYLE, successes and difficulties in implementing the STYLE framework, and behavior and cognitive changes over time. Data should also be collected directly from people with lived experience through focus groups and listening sessions to iteratively refine content that needs updating and eventually to measure outcomes from a subset of people in the legal system.