Systemic trauma is inflicted when the process itself acts as an unyielding wall, punishing participants for the chaotic realities of poverty, instability, or crisis. By embedding harm reduction into the very mechanics of dispute resolution procedure, we shift the system’s primary directive from legal processing to trauma mitigation.
Traditional legal proceedings often function as a secondary assault, extracting a narrative through adversarial interrogation, threatening financial ruin, and forcing participants into cold, intimidating environments. Harm reduction acts as a protective shield, systematically intercepting and neutralizing these three distinct vectors of trauma.