Partner Profiles
Caroline Isaacs
Caring for the Community Through Education & Advocacy
No member of our Coalition has worked harder to end the War on Drugs than Caroline Isaacs, the executive director of Tucson-based Just Communities Arizona (JCA), a nonprofit that advocates for policy changes to the justice system.
Caroline and the team at JCA are a little different than the rest of our Coalition; they don’t provide legal aid services. But the work JCA does is no less crucial to the success of expungement efforts across the state.
“There are a lot of people in the state of Arizona who potentially are eligible for expungement of their marijuana record, and they have no idea”
“No good policy change is worth anything if you don’t think about implementation,” Caroline said. “There are a lot of people in the state of Arizona who potentially are eligible for expungement of their marijuana record, and they have no idea, because it’s not on the news every day, and it’s not reaching people where they’re at.”
“So that’s JCA’s job: to make sure that the community hears from credible messengers,” she said, “people who are known in the community, who have lived experience, that help them understand the perspective of folks that are eligible for this service and what the barriers might be for them to access it.”
JCA leads information sessions throughout the community for other nonprofit service providers and government agencies—like their series of Zoom webinars—to help them better serve their clients and constituencies by knowing about the expungement process. JCA, as a longtime leader of criminal justice reform efforts in Arizona, also works with its network across the state to promote clinics and amplify the Coalition’s work.
“Criminalizing marijuana does no one any good and is a waste of time and money and energy and lives.”
Caroline said she grew up in the “era of drug prohibition when we were fed all kinds of lies and unhelpful misinformation about drugs and people who use drugs.” And that misinformation harms everyone in the community, Caroline said, whether you are a person who uses drugs or not. “All of us are harmed by not really having truthful information on which to base our decisions,” she added.
Caroline credits Prop 207, the voter initiative that legalized adult recreational marijuana use when it was passed in 2020, for teaching Arizonans that criminalizing marijuana “does no one any good and is a waste of time and money and energy and lives.
“It doesn’t always feel like Prop 207 has made such a big impact,” Caroline said, “but it is a huge step.”
You can join JCA’s fellow Tucsonans, the UofA Civil Rights Restoration Clinic, at a free expungement event at the UofA Law Room 118 on Saturday, Feb. 25, from 9 a.m. to noon. See details.
