Author: Matt Davis

Since 2015, Policy Research, Inc. (PRI) has partnered with MacArthur’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) to reduce the number of individuals involved, or at risk of involvement with, the criminal legal system who have mental illness, substance use, and other complex needs. Studies highlight the importance of concentrating on this population as communities work to tackle the misuse and overuse of jails and create more equitable systems:

• About 5% of the general population has a Serious Mental Illness (SMI), compared with 5% of men and 31% of women incarcerated in local jails. An even greater percentage of both groups lives with broader mental health needs and are prescribed psychotropic medication.
• 63% of those incarcerated in jail have a substance use disorder.
• People with mental illness often remain in jail longer than individuals without.
• Despite overall jail population reductions in the last few years, many communities participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge have seen the proportion of individuals with mental illness increase.
• Despite stigmatizing myths, the majority of individuals with mental illness are not violent and the majority of violent acts are not committed by those with mental illness.

As part of the Safety and Justice Challenge, PRI created the IMPACT Network to provide technical assistance to participating communities on issues related to the over-incarceration of individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders. The IMPACT Network communities engage in a peer-to-peer learning model to accelerate best and promising practices in behavioral health reform and jail diversion, with a commitment to pursuing community-driven, race-conscious solutions to reduce harm to populations overrepresented in, or disparately impacted by, the criminal legal system.

The SJC IMPACT Network began in 2021 with a group of 11 jurisdictions.

Over the past two years, these communities have participated in topical technical assistance meetings focused on behavioral health data tracking and evaluation, equity within the intersection of the criminal legal system and behavioral health, developing early diversion strategies, building a robust jail continuum of care, and other critical topics.

The communities participating in the IMPACT Network focus on a variety of strategies to decrease inappropriate incarceration of people with behavioral health needs.

Allegheny County, PA

Allegheny County’s Justice Related Services (JRS) provides assessment, treatment placement, and service coordination to court-involved individuals with mental health or co-occurring diagnoses. They are also focusing on balancing risk and needs during decision making for people with behavioral health needs, developing alternative response to certain 911 calls, and building out a broader continuum of peer supports for court-involved people.

Orange County, CA

In April 2022, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office launched their Focused Intervention Route to Services and Treatment (FIRST Point) pre-filing diversion pilot program. The pilot program connects people who have committed low-level crimes with services to address mental health and substance use issues to ensure a criminal proceeding does not inhibit future work and education opportunities.

San Juan County, NM

San Juan County has worked closely with community stakeholders and cross-agency representatives through their Sequential Intercept Mapping (SIM) process, identifying gaps in services available to individuals with behavioral health needs. As part of their post-SIM work, the county plans to identify a system for data collection that will assist stakeholders in tracking the county needs and build planning capacity toward creation of a mental health drop-in center.

In early 2023, PRI expanded the IMPACT Network by adding six additional communities: Doña Ana County, NM; Solano County, CA; Sarpy County, NE; Douglas County, NE; Issaquah, WA; and Natrona County, WY, for a total of 17 jurisdictions. This new group of counties brings to the IMPACT Network communities from the West and Midwest, including several smaller and more rural jurisdictions.

We are excited to further diversify the IMPACT Network and continue this important work toward the goals of reimagining systems, reducing the footprint of local jails, and increasing equity.

A recent uptick in violent crime across the country has alarmed many Americans. But even as communities work to address the root causes of violence and the effects of incarceration, new data from our Safety and Justice Challenge shows there is no link between reducing jail populations and increases in crime. Communities can feel confident in efforts to reform the local criminal justice system and safely reduce the jail population.

Since 2013, MacArthur has invested over $323 million in local justice reform, including tracking progress and analyzing the effectiveness of reform strategies. We have built close partnerships with research leaders in the criminal justice field, including grantee City University of New York’s Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG) and the JFA Institute, to examine data from cities and counties participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge.

From this deep engagement with data and our relationships with diverse experts and people with lived experience, we have learned many valuable lessons. And the findings of two new reports—“Jail Populations, Violent Crime, and COVID-19: Findings from the Safety and Justice Challenge” by ISLG and “The Impact of COVID-19 on Crime, Arrests, and Jail Populations” by the JFA Institute—are among the most useful and insightful, and reinforce with data what we have heard from people involved in the justice system.

These analyses looked at what happens when cities and counties across the country focus on criminal justice reforms that make the system more fair, just, and equitable. They found that in communities participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge, there is no relationship between reforms that reduce reliance on jails and recent upticks in violent crime across the United States.

Reducing Jail Populations While Keeping Communities Safe

Since the Safety and Justice Challenge began, participating cities and counties have collectively reduced their jail population by 20 percent. This has resulted in about 15,000 fewer people in jail on any given day, allowing individuals, who are legally presumed to be innocent, to instead remain with their families, communities, and hold onto their jobs while their cases were pending.

JFA Institute’s close examination of the data found that even considering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which temporarily reduced jail populations dramatically nationwide, most Safety and Justice Challenge cities and counties continued to outperform the nation as a whole in reducing jail populations, without jeopardizing community safety. As COVID-19 mitigation efforts wane, these communities have shown that progress can be sustained. Many of the emergency measures taken to reduce the jail populations during the pandemic, and that have remained in place in the months since, do not have an impact on public safety.

Meanwhile, ISLG’s analysis looks at how often individuals released from jail return to custody while their criminal case is still pending. The findings, which use individual-level jail admissions data from 2015 through April 2021, show that reforms focused on releasing people from jail before their trial did not drive recent increases in violent crime. The report found:

• There is no correlation between declines in jail incarceration and increases in violent crime through COVID-19.
• Most individuals released on pretrial status were not rebooked into jail. This has remained consistent over the years.
• Of the small percentage of the individuals rebooked into jail, it was very rare that they returned with a violent crime charge and exceedingly rare that they returned with a homicide charge.

The evidence is clear: cities and counties should push forward with making the criminal justice system more equitable and fair. The decreased use of jails has no impact on crime, particularly violent crime, and communities should look beyond incarceration to address safety concerns. To claim that reforms jeopardize community safety ignores the data and unnecessarily puts the lives of incarcerated individuals and their families at risk.

New research findings directly address recent claims about the role of criminal legal reforms in violent crime trends.

In response to the rapid spread of COVID-19, jails across the country implemented emergency strategies to reduce jail populations and mitigate the virus’s spread. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, public data show that violent crime and homicides have increased nationally. These increases have put a spotlight on criminal legal reform efforts, with growing public discourse in some political and media circles suggesting that reforms are causing these increases.

These claims often speculate that people released due to efforts to reduce jail populations are responsible for new violent acts committed. They make for attention-grabbing headlines but are not backed by any evidence-based research. They do not acknowledge the concurrent complex web of pandemic-related social and economic strains, or the fact that homicides increased in many major cities that did not enact progressive jail reform efforts.

The recent uptick in violent crime is real, but the increase is reflected across the country. This includes jurisdictions with progressive and traditional prosecutors, and cities and counties pursuing jail reform and those maintaining the status quo.

Digging Into the Data

Data collected from cities and counties participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a multi-year initiative funded by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is the basis for one of the only analyses exploring these questions in depth on a national, multi-site scale.

To explore whether increases in violent crime were related to both the pandemic and criminal legal reforms, The CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG) analyzed pre and post pandemic jail data on individuals released from jail on pretrial status, defined as people released from physical jail custody while their trial is ongoing, pending the disposition of one or more booking charges. The analysis shows how many individuals released from jail on pretrial status were returned to jail custody within six months (referred to as a rebooking).

The findings from this analysis, using individual-level jail admissions data from March 2015 to April 2021, show that reforms focused on releasing people from jail on pretrial status did not appear to drive recent increases in violent crime. In contrast, ISLG found that for SJC cities and counties:

• There is no apparent correlation between declines in jail incarceration and increases in violent crime through COVID-19.
• Most individuals released on pretrial status were not rebooked into jail. This has remained consistent over the years.
• Of the small percentage of the individuals rebooked into jail, it was very rare to return with a violent crime charge and exceedingly rare to return with a homicide charge.

It is likely that many complex social and economic factors related to the pandemic contributed to the overall increases in violence, and particularly in homicides, that occurred across cities in 2020. However, findings from this analysis suggest that evidence-driven criminal legal reforms were not among those factors.

There is no apparent correlation between declines in jail incarceration and increases in violent crime through COVID-19

Following the implementation of SJC strategies to reduce local jail populations, SJC cities and counties’ incarceration rates declined at a faster pace compared to the national average, yet trends in violent crime were similar to the national trend. Violent crime was down across SJC sites and the nation between 2017-2019, only increasing during the pandemic in 2020.

Further, when looking at data for individual SJC cities and counties, all 23 SJC cities and counties decreased their incarceration rate between 2019 and 2020, when the pandemic emerged. However, changes in violent crime varied across cities and counties, and larger decreases in the jail population were not always associated with increases in violence.

Most individuals released on pretrial status were not rebooked into jail and very rarely were they rebooked on a violent crime charge, which remained consistent over the years

Using data from local jails in SJC cities and counties, ISLG followed people released on pretrial status and measured whether they were rebooked into jail within six months of the release.

This analysis showed that across five years from 2015 to 2020, about three out of four people released on pretrial status were not rebooked into jail. In other words, people released from jail

were no more likely to return to jail after the implementation of SJC or CO

VID-19-related strategies for reducing jail populations. Over time, a very small share (two to three percent) of people released on pretrial status were rebooked within six months for a violent charge, a rate consistent before SJC implementation in 2015, during SJC implementation from 2017 to 2019, and through COVID-19 in 2020.

While violent crime may have increased in some SJC cities and counties overall, people who were released from jail while their criminal cases were pending were not the cause of these increases. The overwhelming majority of people released on pretrial status between 2015 and 2020 (over 96 percent) did not return to jail on a violent crime charge.

The rebooking rate for homicides specifically was even rarer: over 99% of people released on pretrial status were not rebooked on a homicide charge within six months. This was consistent from 2015 to 2020.

The Need for Evidence-Based Research instead of Attention-Grabbing Headlines

This study adds to the growing evidence that advancing equitable and thoughtful criminal legal reform is possible without compromising public safety. To suggest otherwise without evidence undermines the harms of incarceration on individuals, their families, and communities. Such discourse also distracts from genuine attempts to understand the true causes of rising violent crime, particularly homicides. More research is needed to unpack the increases in violence during a time of even more pronounced disparity in the U.S. as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

A recent research project by the Vera Institute of Justice offers lessons for jail systems around the country on the dangers of criminalizing women’s poverty.

The picture for women in America’s jails remains troubling. Women in the United States only make up 4% of the world’s population, but the United States itself incarcerates 30% of the world’s population of women behind bars.

A stark example of the challenge in Buncombe County is that most of the women who were incarcerated at the Buncombe Country Detention Center in 2020 hadn’t even been convicted of a crime. More than two-thirds of women on average were jailed pretrial; fewer than 10% were serving a sentence. Many could go home if they had the money, but they remained in jail because they couldn’t afford to post bail.

In Buncombe County, the women’s jail incarceration rate increased tenfold from 1970 to 2019. Since joining the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, Buncombe County’s jail population has increased, making the report’s recommendations all the more timely and urgent. Although the total Buncombe County Detention Facility population dropped by about 35 percent from spring 2019 to spring 2020, from 420 people to 272 people—largely due to swift action and collaboration between the detention center, law enforcement, court partners, and other key stakeholders in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic—the population rebounded and surpassed pre-COVID numbers in 2022. It is important to note that the jail population has started to decrease in the last few months as the county has made progress in identifying and implementing strategies that better address the drivers of incarceration. Although women make up a relatively small portion of the jail population—approximately 16 percent from 2017 to 2019, declining to about 11 percent in 2020, and then increasing through 2022—their circumstances and needs remain distinct and warrant particular attention.

The research project was part of the broader jail reduction work of the Safety and Justice Challenge Network, with findings based on administrative data from the jail and virtual surveys and interviews with 40 incarcerated women, representing nearly all the women who were held in the jail in September 2021.

Of the 40 women surveyed in the Buncombe County Detention Center, all but one said they struggled with drug or alcohol use. All but two said they were survivors of some form of violence, including domestic assault or physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.

In uncovering the paths that led to women’s incarceration in the county detention center, we concluded that many of them were there because their poverty had been criminalized. More than 20% of women who were admitted to the jail in 2020 were charged with a property crime, like larceny, burglary, or trespassing—low-level charges rooted in surviving the pressures of poverty.

In line with national patterns, women’s pathways into the jail in Buncombe County are shaped by economic instability, policies that criminalize acts of survival, and acts related to substance dependency.

Another theme that emerged was poor jail conditions and the costs associated with detention. Most of the women stated that they have no source of income when in detention. They shared that the average amount of money needed to cover necessities was $70 a week. The most common costs were for phone calls, hygiene products, and medical visits. Several women said they went for two weeks or more without toothpaste, shampoo, or clean underwear, which we believe may have been exacerbated by COVID. Women reported that the jail provides “indigent kits”—basic hygiene kits—but these cost $2 each, which is out of reach for people who are indigent.

One woman described:

“$20 for an ibuprofen. I’ve ordered the indigent kit for $1.98 and I’m $7 in the hole and I haven’t received anything. . . . I have no soap, no toothpaste.”

Another woman commented:

“Have to beg for these terrible pads. This happened this morning. I waited for an officer. She said, ‘It’s about to be shift change so ask someone else.’ I needed new underwear.”

In December 2021, jail staff stated that the indigent kit fee was eliminated. According to jail officials, the policy is that no incarcerated person is denied basic hygiene items due to lack of funds in their account.

On top of this is the county’s $20 charge for a medical visit to a nurse or doctor. As a result, women struggle on their own with ongoing medical conditions, pain, and lack of medication—which can result in health crises or hospital visits, a costly consequence of the initial, prohibitive fee. According to jail officials, the medical fee was waived during the height of COVID-19 and has since been reduced to $10.

Our study makes several recommendations to reduce the criminalization of poverty in Buncombe County. They include better housing options, alternatives to arrest and jail for certain charges, and creating a policy where the District Attorney’s office declines to prosecute certain low-level charges, especially those related to poverty or that pose no public safety risk. The study also recommends reforming bail practices, and codifying and expanding on COVID-era practices, such as the use of unsecured bail and warrant grace periods. It also recommends assessing the ability to pay before setting bail. The County can improve jail conditions, eliminate costs, and ensure better interagency coordination and communication to ensure women receive frequent and clear communication about their case status.

The study also recommends expanding time out of cells for women, and allowing in-person visits with family, especially children. It recommends expanding access to in-person and virtual programming, beyond substance use treatment. Buncombe County must ensure medical visits, phone calls, video calls, and virtual programming are free to incarcerated women.

Buncombe County’s Community Engagement Workgroup established a subcommittee to oversee county implementation of recommendations. There is a clear opportunity for jurisdictions like Buncombe County to invest in supportive community-based services, to reduce future criminal legal system involvement, and prevent it in the first place for many people, especially women.

This past November, during our bi-annual Facing Race Conference, community organizer Sendolo Diaminah–Co-Director and Founder of the Carolina Federation–made the following statement: “We have power, we want more, and we want to be responsible with it and be accountable to an ethic.” This bold statement was shared to challenge the audience of 3,000 racial justice advocates to “release our fear of power”, while elevating the importance of “being responsible with power”.

We offer this in the spirit of deep reflection this Black History month. We at Race Forward and the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) believe in the audacious dream of a multi-racial democracy. We envision a world without prisons, and one in which people of color thrive with power and purpose. But we have a long way to go.

In GARE, we support a network of over 400 city, state, regional jurisdictions, and state departments committed to advancing racial equity. And as we know, the work to advance racial equity requires disrupting and shifting power to the people most harmed and impacted by systemic racism. Within the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) community, this often means letting go, making space, and centering the expertise of system-impacted people and frontline staff, while investing in infrastructure for community-led government accountability.

On the heels of Black History Month, our team will be hosting the SJC Racial Equity Cohort sites–Cook County, Pima County, Philadelphia, and New Orleans–in Montgomery, Alabama, on the Indigenous land of the Muscogee people, as the first of a three-part Learning Exchange Retreat series. We are gathering there to hold space, build solidarity, and deepen our collective learning about our history of colonization, genocide, enslavement, and mass incarceration, in order to support the Focused Racial Equity Cohort Sites’ work in that social, historical, and political analysis.

We will be joined by community leaders, people who have been harmed by the justice system, and government leaders seeking to make change from the inside. Preparing for this event reminds us of the generational trauma of our people, and the impact of that trauma today. But we do not want to use this platform to focus on trauma. Instead, let us center generational resilience.

Generational resilience lives in every cell of our bodies. It surfaces when we cook, share a meal, listen to music, soak our feet, dance, laugh, and cry. While generational resilience is a personal experience, it is also a political expression. We are reminded of Shaun Ginwright, an author, activist, and professor in the Africana Studies Department at San Francisco State University, and his writing about this: “Healing centered engagement is explicitly political, rather than clinical,” he writes. “When people advocate for policies and opportunities that address causes of trauma, such as lack of access to mental health, these activities contribute to a sense of purpose, power and control over life situations.”

Earlier this month, we all witnessed Tyre Nichols killing at the hands of Memphis, Tennessee law enforcement as a result of being severely beaten and left uncared for. We, along with others across the country, grieve for Tyre’s family and his community which continues to recount how they have been terrorized by law enforcement. Public safety requires public trust; but the history of law enforcement was not built on trust, it was built on White supremacist “slave patrols” and a “law and order” paradigm that continues to haunt Black and Indigenous People of Color today.

Every day across the country, law enforcement agencies welcome a new cadre of officers who swear an oath not to a Governor, or a legislature, a Police Chief, Commissioner, or a political party, but to the United States Constitution. Yet, every year, thousands of Black and Indigenous People of Color lose their lives at the hands of law enforcement.

We cannot train or program our way out of this human rights crisis. We need to disrupt and shift power. What would it look like, and feel like, to shift power? To truly listen to and follow the leadership of the people most harmed by police brutality? To center our generational resilience? And in the words of Sendolo Diaminah, to “release our fear of power” while building our capacity to “be responsible with power”?