Author: Matt Davis

New research by Justice System Partners supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) shows the positive impacts of police-led deflection strategies on jail reduction efforts. Overall, “deflection first, arrest rare” as a primary policy for eligible offenses helps reduce criminal legal system involvement and improve equity by connecting individuals to the services they need. It no longer makes access to treatment conditional or contingent on arrest.

Download the report here. 

Deflection is different from diversion. Diversion programs make use of pending criminal charges as the mechanism to elicit treatment initiation and compliance from people living with severe mental health disorders and substance use disorders. Although diversion programs do not always include a formal booking to jail, the person does technically enter the legal system’s front door. In contrast, deflection programs entail no criminal legal system involvement beyond the interaction with the police officer in the field. There is no mechanism to coerce treatment initiation or compliance beyond an individual’s own wishes to enter a program. If an individual ultimately decides not to participate in the program they are referred to, there are no legal consequences. Police-led deflection programs also provide police agencies an opportunity to return to the streets and answer calls from 911 more quickly because transporting individuals to community services can take substantially less time than booking an individual in jail. Combined, police-led deflection can make police agencies more efficient while eliminating the collateral consequences of the legal system on individuals.

Police-led deflection allows officers to use discretion to replace arrest with outreach to community-based service providers for select offenses. It transforms police contact into opportunities to broker community resources, especially for individuals with severe mental health disorders and substance use disorders. It is key that we understand how deflection programs work in practice if we are going to improve and expand these programs, reduce jail populations, and improve equity and access to care by connecting people to the help they need.

The goal of the research was to understand how deflection works in Pima County, AZ, and in Charleston County, SC—two SJC sites. We sought to understand how police make decisions about who to deflect and how deflection to a local crisis center impacts people’s subsequent experience. In 2011, Pima County built the Crisis Response Center (CRC) with county bond funds. It is part of the Banner-University of Arizona Medical Center South Campus. The CRC is a short-term inpatient unit with a maximum length of stay of five days and has a “no wrong door” policy – which means they accept nearly everyone, except individuals who require hospitalization, from any law enforcement agency in the county. Similarly, Charleston County runs the Tri-County Crisis Stabilization Center (TCSC) which is a ten-bed voluntary adult crisis center embedded within the Charleston Drug and Alcohol Center where individuals can stay up to 14 days. Both counties’ crisis centers provide immediate treatment options and psychiatric care for individuals.

In Pima County, when people receive at least two voluntary deflections to the local crisis center, they are more likely to continue agreeing to subsequent deflections and, each time they return to the crisis center, they stay longer. In Charleston County, two-thirds of individuals deflected to the local crisis center had a previous case with the county’s mental health department, showing that both police and service providers are often interacting with the same people. These findings suggest that police-led deflection can help connect or re-connect individuals with treatment while reducing the number of individuals who are brought to jail—effectively creating a parallel treatment open door. Importantly, these repeat access points to treatment reflect research that suggests people need multiple opportunities to access treatment services before agreeing and engaging with the program. In this way, police-led deflection, particularly for individuals who have disproportionate police contact, can transform pathways to jail into pathways to the help they need for individuals historically excluded from access.

A parallel treatment open door does not mean failure to initiate or complete treatment. The treatment open door acknowledges the complexity and nuance of treatment and reflects the research about the need for multiple opportunities to remain engaged. When police policy allows multiple deflections of the same individuals, as in Pima and Charleston Counties, it means every interaction with individuals is another opportunity to engage them in treatment while eliminating the collateral consequences of the legal system and jail for these vulnerable populations.

In both counties, if the offense is eligible, the policy allows police to offer deflection to an individual regardless of how many times they offered deflection to the individual in the past. This means that while the policy itself reflects the research on multiple opportunities to engage in treatment, police in practice have the ultimate decision-making authority to deflect or arrest. As a result, police hold a lot of decision-making power for triaging people out of the legal system revolving door, and into a treatment system revolving door. As we continue to unpack how officers make decisions about who to deflect and under what conditions, it is important to consider the intersection of race, gender, and disability and how that impacts officer decision-making about who is “worthy” of deflection.

Officers in Pima County reported people’s willingness to start treatment as the most critical factor when deciding to deflect to a community-based resource. When people did not want to initiate treatment, officers tended to rely on arrest, even when they knew that jail would not help the individual. But the ability to deflect for certain eligible offenses means that the police have determined that no arrest is an acceptable response. This tension demands a critical examination: If people do not wish to go into treatment, are there other ways officers can diffuse and handle the situation without relying on arrest?

Officers in Charleston County cited victims’ wishes—including those of business owners—as the most critical factor when deciding whether or not to begin the process of deflection. For example, when victims remain at the scene and want police to arrest the individual, even when the offense is deflection-eligible and the officer recognizes jail is not helpful, police expressed feeling inclined to defer to the victim and make the arrest, anyway. This means victims are, in part, driving who is offered deflection and potentially contributing to disparate deflections. As such, we must critically examine the role of victims in the deflection initiation process and consider how victims’ own perceptions of justice and implicit bias can temper the positive impact of police-led deflection programs.

“Deflection first, arrest rare” as both policy and principle connects vulnerable individuals, who are historically excluded from the services they need, with easy access to treatment. It also lessens opportunities for implicit bias, determinations of “worthiness,” and non-clinical judgments about readiness for change to impact the decision to deflect. When agencies distance themselves from jail and deflect as the primary response, and do so for everyone, they no longer make access to treatment conditional or contingent.

As I step down from a Safety and Justice Challenge role I’ve served in since 2015, I’m proud of what we achieved together in Charleston, SC and hopeful for the future of justice reform. I am optimistic the progress can provide a path for other communities to sustainably improve their local systems while safely reducing the misuse and overuse of jails.

As reported in our 2021 Annual Report, Charleston County’s local jail population was reduced 40 percent from our initial baseline in 2014 to 2021. Municipal and Magistrate charges booked into our jail were cut by 80 percent. The rate of local bookings among our adult population decreased by 67 percent. The rate of local bookings among Black adults decreased from 178 per 1,000 Black adults to 58. The number of unique individuals repeatedly cycling through our jail, most often on lower-level charges, decreased by 71 percent. At the same time, Circuit Court charges booked into our jail kept steady and our crime trends remained similar to that in the rest of our state–which did not enact our reforms. We now have even more refined data and expertise to lead the way forward in making our local system more effective, equitable and efficient.

Those results have not happened by accident. They are the result of intentional data-guided collaborations between diverse stakeholders in Charleston, from executives leading agencies within the system to diverse members of our community. We came together, cutting across lines of responsibility and power, to objectively look at how our system was serving all of us and found sustainable ways to do more good than harm. We made it better by forming a Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC), assuming nothing, rethinking expectations, and continually using data to guide us. While there is more work to be done, the CJCC’s efforts moving forward will continue to be focused and intentional. For instance, the evidence-base is clearly pointing the way forward to reducing the time from arrest to disposition and improving pretrial outcomes.

Before joining the SJC I experienced the gap between what jurisdictions and/or independent justice system agencies were trying to do with reform measures and what was happening on the ground in local communities. If you have seen my TEDx talk you know my journey led me from experiencing the system first-hand, to working on the front lines in probation and parole, to working within organizations and legislative spaces trying to bring about greater alignment between what the research shows works and what actually happens, day-in and day-out.

Wherever I was working in the country, the gap between intentions for reform, and what was happening on the ground, persisted. It was natural because change is challenging. The challenges are also exacerbated by the constant barrage of hot button issues in the news. I found that jurisdictions often whacked one mole on the road to reform, only to find another mole pop up. It was disorienting and exhausting. I’d had enough of the reactive whack-a-mole approach and wanted to take a more proactive and sustainable localized approach to reform.

I came to realize if I really wanted to help make a system work better for the families and communities it served, I had to go local, and it had to be done with a collective body of system leaders and representatives of the community they served. I was convinced if we singularly focused our reform efforts on pulling one policy lever or another, or focused too much on one decision-maker or another, reforms would continue to come up short. To truly reform the system, we had to focus on the whole system.

Every decision-maker in the “system” and every decision mattered. Together, we could form a CJCC, assess how our system was working, set specific goals, and measure progress against those goals. After a lot of reflection, I came up with my dream job. I wanted to work hand-in-hand with local system actors and the communities they served. I wanted to form a CJCC, to use data to ground the dialogue, and to look beyond the next mole that pops up. While I was convinced this had to be the way forward, there were not many others willing to give it a shot, and there were no staffed CJCCs in South Carolina.

Then along came MacArthur’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC). When it launched, I stepped up to serve as a volunteer in Charleston alongside some brave early adopters. Together, we eventually formed the Charleston CJCC.  We challenged one another, learned from each other, and became one of the first communities to join SJC. Over the last seven years, our CJCC has grown. It went from a scrappy startup to a mainstay in the community leading the way for others. While we remain the only community from South Carolina in the SJC, additional CJCCs are forming across the state. The collaborative, data-guided work of our CJCC is also contributing to the development of the first-ever national standards for CJCCs.

My vision is to see this kind of transformation take place across the country. There are roughly 3,000 counties across America and many of them lack the kind of sustained data-guided collaboration we have managed to pull together in Charleston and across many SJC cities and counties. Every community can and should have a high-functioning CJCC that brings diverse stakeholders together to look at its data, to see how its system is functioning, set specific goals, monitor their progress, and make it happen. Inevitably, the data will point to inefficiencies and inequities and countless stories of harms done. The data will also point to a number of opportunities to do more good than harm. I implore anyone reading this to be on the lookout for the forthcoming CJCC national standards published by the National Institute of Corrections in conjunction with the National Network of CJCCs and to strive to live them out.

As criminal justice reforms continue to evolve, I urge my colleagues to embrace data and constructive dialogue as their guide, stay focused on what makes their community safer and more just, and keep coming together. CJCC’s provide a sustainable forum for us all to demand collective accountability from the entire system and foster the learning environment necessary to make it happen.

Personally, it has been a challenging and rewarding experience to get to live out this journey, and I am excited for the continued efforts of the Charleston CJCC and CJCCs across the country. Meanwhile, I am also a mother who feels like time is moving way too fast. So, I am about to embark on my next journey to spend more time with my kids. For now, I am taking a step back from full-time work before that brief window of childhood closes and the next chapter opens.

I wish my colleagues at SJC sites across the country continued success as we continue to collaborate locally and across the country to do more good than harm.

A new R Street Institute report supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge explores the successful implementation of pre-arrest diversion strategies in three conservative communities. Such strategies respond to challenges facing law enforcement agencies across the country including staffing shortages, negative public perception, overpopulation in jails, increases in violent crime, and court backlogs.

While criminal justice reform can be a politically charged term, we found that several conservative jurisdictions champion pre-arrest diversion as a way to support law enforcement and to remain fiscally disciplined. These jurisdictions have prioritized police time and resources, enabling law enforcement to deal with serious crimes while simultaneously rebuilding community relationships. They have also effectively diverted low-level offenders while balancing individual rights and public safety. The paper spotlights three jurisdictions that employ at least one diversion strategy, and in so doing, reveals how the traditionally conservative values of public safety, fiscal responsibility, and limited government interference are at the core of such programs. The paper also explores how to overcome challenges around starting diversion programs.

Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD)— Cheyenne, Wyoming

Police-initiated diversion gives officers the opportunity to refer someone to intensive case management outside the criminal justice system rather than cite or arrest the individual for a crime.

Laramie County, Wyo., where Cheyenne is located, has been particularly successful in implementing Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD). The community explored this option after finding that prosecuting and jailing individuals with behavioral health needs was ineffective in improving public safety. Officials and professionals merely saw a “revolving door” of the same individuals. Further, Cheyenne had seen a steady increase of mental health calls, violent crimes, and overdose related deaths; they needed to try something different.

When the program first began, some officers were hesitant to refer individuals to LEAD. In fact, one lieutenant at the Cheyenne Police Department feared LEAD, “wasn’t holding people accountable and just allow[ed] people to screw up with no consequence.” But many officers gradually saw the positive results. The lieutenant who initially was a skeptic eventually became “all in.” Officers realized that even if individuals were being arrested, they returned to the streets upon release with no support or services in place to help them change behaviors, with many returning to drug use or other destructive activities. LEAD has been a positive step for these individuals. In fact, officers tracked how many contacts they were having with people who were frequently arrested and found after a LEAD referral, officers had not talked to many of these individuals in months. One individual said the LEAD program saved his family member’s life.

Co-responder Model— El Paso County, Colorado

Though police officers generally do not have the training to handle mental health crises, many communities rely upon police to handle such issues. In an effort to support law enforcement in these situations, many communities have implemented co-responder programs. In a co-responder model, a behavioral health clinician (and in some models, emergency medical personnel) accompany law enforcement on patrol.

The sheriff’s office in El Paso County, Co. formed their own co-responder program, the Behavioral Health Connect Unit (BHCON), in 2017 after realizing they needed to reduce jail intake rates. When researching how to reduce the jail population, they realized that a high number of incarcerated individuals suffered from mental health issues. The BHCON team now responds to mental health crisis calls as well as low-level crimes in which it is clear that the individual’s mental health crisis—rather than criminal intent—is the cause for the criminal act.

This immediate response to someone in crisis has resulted in a reduction of expensive arrests and jail admissions as well as a reduction in mandatory psychiatric holds (often referred to as a “72-hour hold”) that are often done in hospitals. In 2021, BHCON responded to 1,154 calls for service. From those calls, BHCON diverted 99 percent from jail and 85 percent from the emergency department. At a time when hospitals are having to divert patients (due largely to COVID-19), saving hospital space is essential. BHCON has also relieved law enforcement of having to rely on the jail as a de facto mental health facility when an individual does not meet the threshold for a mandatory psychiatric hold.

Community Responders— St. Petersburg, Florida

Too often, law enforcement is responding to noncriminal calls where their presence is not necessary. Community Responders (or Civilian Response) takes the co-responder model and removes the police officer entirely. That is, community responders divert individuals from the criminal justice system by having trained, non-law enforcement professionals respond to certain calls for service that do not require a gun and a badge.

This model is the most effective at reserving police resources for the most dangerous crimes while also lowering the potential of escalating a situation by removing the presence of law enforcement. Instead, dispatch alerts community responders who have backgrounds and specific training to help in situations where behavioral health and/or social concerns are the prominent issue.

In 2019, St. Petersburg’s police department partnered with a local nonprofit to form Community Assistance and Life Liaison (CALL). Under the CALL model, clinical staff and community navigators respond to calls such as panhandling, truancy, welfare checks, mental health holds, and disputes between neighbors. When initiating the program, the St. Petersburg Police Department believed such a program could respond to approximately 12,700 calls, diverting individuals from the criminal justice system.

Overcoming Challenges to Diversion

While law enforcement agencies and local elected officials seem to be open to the idea of diversion, many jurisdictions face hurdles when it comes to implementation. Even with proven success, available funding, and law enforcement buy-in, concerns of logistics, safety, and cost can create hurdles. The report focuses on ways these communities have overcome such challenges and shows it is time for other communities, of any political leaning, to support law enforcement in shutting down the inefficient revolving door of the criminal justice system. Ultimately, these pre-arrest diversion programs can and should be implemented to increase public safety, protect personal rights, and save taxpayer dollars.

A new Safety and Justice Challenge report explores the factors contributing to the overrepresentation in the criminal legal system of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or who hold other marginalized gender identity and/or sexual orientation identities (LGBTQ+). The report–which was released with funding support from the MacArthur Foundation–also explores how LGBTQ+ people or color and LGBTQ+ people with disabilities experience even higher rates of system involvement than their White LGBTQ+ peers.

A full copy is available for download here.

Documenting the number of LGBTQ+ within the criminal legal system is difficult because of the evolving terminology, a lack of uniform data collection, and people’s discomfort with disclosure in the system. Despite difficulties with data collection, emerging data indicate that LGBTQ+ individuals experience high rates of arrest and incarceration. According to an analysis of data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals were 2.25 times more likely to be arrested in the last year when compared to heterosexual individuals. Data from the 2015 National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) assessed arrest just within the last year and found that 6 percent of Black transgender women and 6 percent of Native American transgender women reported at least one arrest. By comparison, an estimated 3 percent of the overall U.S. population is arrested each year. According to a study using data from the National Inmate Survey, the incarceration rate of people who self-identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual was three times that of the general U.S. population.

The report focuses on several things that contribute to LGBTQ+ people’s overrepresentation, as well as some ways they are impacted while in jail:

Discrimination by System Actors

LGBTQ+ individuals report high rates of discrimination and harassment by criminal legal system actors, including police, judges, and prison staff. A study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individual’s experiences of discrimination within the criminal legal system conducted by Lambda Legal found that 73 percent of respondents had face-to-face contact with the police within the past five years. Almost a quarter reported that police had a hostile attitude towards them. Furthermore, the study found that, among respondents who had been involved in the court system in the last five years, 19 percent overhead a judge, attorney, or other court employee make negative comments about their sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression.

Conditions of Confinement

Inside jails and prisons, LGBTQ+ individuals experience heightened harassment and abuse. Prison and jail staff are often the perpetrators of this victimization; according to Lambda Legal’s report, among survey respondents with a history of incarceration 7 percent were sexually assaulted, 12 percent were physically assaulted, 27 percent were sexually harassed, and 57 percent were verbally assaulted or harassed by jail or prison staff. Staff also fail to prevent victimization; according to a survey conducted by Black & Pink of incarcerated LGBTQ+ individuals, 76 percent of respondents believe that prison staff intentionally placed them in situations where they were likely to be sexually assaulted by another prisoner. Incarcerated LGBTQ+ youth and adults report high rates of placement in solitary confinement while incarcerated.

Healthcare Barriers

People in jail who identify as LGBTQ+ are routinely denied inclusive health care, particularly transgender affirming care and HIV treatment. Black & Pink’s survey of LGBTQ+ inmates found that 67 percent of respondents had been diagnosed with a mental illness, yet 48 percent of people with a diagnosis were not receiving mental health therapy. Many transgender individuals choose to receive hormone therapy as a component of medically affirming one’s gender.

Criminalization of LGBTQ+ Identities

In recent U.S. history, stereotypes about deviance were perpetuated by laws targeting LGBTQ+ communities, such as those that criminalized homosexual sex and wearing clothing of the “opposite” sex. These laws have, for the most part, been overturned or repealed, or are no longer enforced, yet they contributed to lasting cultural representations and perceptions of LGBTQ+ individuals as deviant.

More recent laws criminalize aspects of LGBTQ+ identities in less direct ways. For example, in recent years many states have attempted to pass legislation restricting access to public restrooms and locker rooms for transgender individuals.

Regardless of engagement in criminalized activities, LGBTQ+ people are subjected to heightened police surveillance due to these perceptions of deviance. Additionally, this bias contributes to disparities in charges filed, adjudication, and sentencing of LGBTQ+ individuals.

The School-To-Prison Pipeline

Many LGBTQ+ students experience bullying in school. According to the most recent National School Climate Survey, 82 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender respondents had experienced verbal harassment at school, and 36.7 percent reported being physically harassed. Yet many do not receive help from school staff and instead defend themselves, which often results in punishment in accordance with so-called “zero tolerance” policies. Additionally, LGBTQ+ youth, particularly LGBTQ+ youth of color, are more likely to be punished for non-violent school infractions, such as public displays of affection and dress code violations.

Homelessness, Unemployment, and Poverty

Due to a complex web of family rejection, homelessness, unemployment, poverty, bias, and discrimination, LGBTQ+ individuals may turn to criminalized activities like theft, panhandling, and sex work in order to survive. Heightened police surveillance increases the likelihood of LGBTQ+ individuals being arrested and charged for forms of criminalized survival. LGBTQ+ individuals with a history of criminal legal system involvement experience heightened discrimination and exclusion from employment, education, and other opportunities because of their records, leading to continued homelessness, unemployment, and poverty. This creates a revolving door back into the system.

Violence and Victimization

LGBTQ+ individuals experience high rates of violence and victimization, including child abuse, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and bias-related victimization. Yet many LGBTQ+ individuals feel uncomfortable seeking support, especially from the police.

Lacking legal or other supportive services, many LGBTQ+ individuals are left with few good options to protect themselves from victimization. There are no available data regarding the number of LGBTQ+ individuals who have been arrested or incarcerated for defending themselves from victimization.

Interrupting Pathways to Incarceration

The report spotlights organizations across the country working to interrupt these pathways and by extension, reduce the overrepresentation of LGBTQ+ people in the system. AA full copy is available for download here.

Cities and counties participating in the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) significantly reduced their jail populations over the past few years – both prior to and since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite that progress, racial and ethnic disparities in jails persist. You can read more about the data here.

In January 2022, the Challenge deepened its commitment to learning and investing in more intentional and effective strategies to eliminate institutional and systemic racism within the justice system. It selected four jurisdictions to join a new Racial Equity Cohort based on proposals that explicitly focused on racial and ethnic equity in the criminal justice system.

The four cities and counties selected to participate in the Racial Equity Cohort were Cook County (IL), New Orleans (LA), Philadelphia (PA), and Pima County (AZ). Their proposals centered lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color. They also emphasized the SJC Community Engagement Pillars of authenticity, accessibility and transparency, respect for diversity, and commitment to ongoing engagement. Participation in the Racial Equity Cohort provides communities with training and technical assistance focused on racial equity and authentic community engagement, peer-to-peer support from other cohort members, and qualitative and quantitative data and analytic support.

Nearly six months into the project, we spoke to people in Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia about the progress of the initiative so far.

Sisters With a Goal Research Budgets in Philadelphia

The author of three books, Reverend Dr. Michelle Anne Simmons is the founder and Executive Director of Why Not Prosper, Inc., a grassroots Philadelphia nonprofit devoted to helping incarcerated women make a smooth transition back into society. Michelle has lived experience of incarceration and overcoming addiction, achieving sobriety in 1999. In 2014, she helped form and implement a pilot program for women escaping trafficking. Since then, she has created several services supporting Philadelphia women including graphic arts programs, leadership advocacy programs helping women recognize their leadership abilities, domestic violence programs, and women’s advocacy workshops. She received a full and unconditional pardon for her conviction in 2015.

Michelle’s team of Sisters With A Goal (“SWAG” for short) is leading an exploration into justice investment in Philadelphia through a participatory action research project—a kind of research project where people who are traditionally subject to research are viewed as experts in their own experience and stories, and are involved in the question development. They are working with academics at Bryn Mawr College on the project. As part of the project the Vera Institute of Justice worked with Philadelphia’s Office of the Director of Finance to produce an analysis of criminal justice spending. Based on that analysis, Michelle and her sisters are coming up with deeper questions for further research around racial and ethnic disparities.

“We’ve all been involved in the criminal justice system,” Michelle said. “Now we’re leaders in the community. And we’ve not historically been involved in looking at the data or the budgets. If you look at the budget with a regular lens, you might not see what we’re seeing. But if you look at the budget with an equity lens and you look at how many people are arrested and where the money is being spent, it gives you a whole different picture. And we’re also having an intentional dialogue around that as we come up with a pilot program to do things differently.”

The goal is to look at reinvesting some of Philadelphia’s criminal justice dollars into a community-based alternative under a pilot program suggested by the community, said Lisa Varon, the Interim Deputy Director in the Office of Criminal Justice at the City of Philadelphia, which is also a partner in the research project.

“This is an example of people closest to the issue looking at the possible solutions themselves, and we’re excited to learn from the ideas coming from the community,” Lisa said. “Government can’t solve the racial equity issue on its own, so I do appreciate that we’ve had the opportunity to partner with the community to come up with solutions.”

Meanwhile, the city is also partnering with the Center for Carceral Communities, an initiative of the University of Pennsylvania, to work collaboratively with neighborhoods in West Philadelphia to help people with a history of incarceration re-engage with the community. In partnership with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, CCC will deliver services as part of a diversion program pilot, providing free, evidence-based psychosocial services to participants.

 Intentional Conversations in Chicago

Kim Davis-Ambrose is the Community Engagement Coordinator for the Justice Advisory Council in Cook County. She describes Chicago’s history in Dickensian terms: “We absolutely see Chicago as the tale of two cities,” she said. “And I’ve lived and breathed that because I grew up in public housing. So, I understand how we got here.”

She has been working in partnership with Everyday Democracy as technical assistance providers on a dialogue-to-change process in three of Cook County’s most vulnerable communities based on data about recidivism, violence, and disparities.

“We’ve started to have conversations intentionally to hear from community members what their feelings were toward the criminal justice system, what their feelings were, and what they think needs to be done to improve the system,” she said. “And how we could best partner with community to continue to have their voices at the table in a shared power space.”

As part of the racial equity cohort, Kim’s team is working in six communities and identifying people who would like to become fellows and be paid a stipend so that their voices can be part of ongoing efforts to reform.

“We take for granted that people understand the criminal justice system, but that’s not true,” she said. “And we want people to be able to continue to educate the community about what the different wheels are of the system and how they can continue or start to become involved.”

The fellows will go through a rigorous trauma-informed curriculum covering violence intervention, restorative justice, community organizer facilitation and training.

“We want them to be equipped to go into the community and continue that dialogue to change process,” Kim said.

Derrick Dawson is a National Organizer and Workshop Facilitator for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training in Chicago. As an Equity Cohort Partner to the Cook County Racial Equity Cohort, he is focused on addressing long-term systemic and institutional racism as a factor in who goes to jail and who does not.

Right now, Derrick is working to identify fellows within ten organizations working on the ground on these issues, who will be paid a stipend to participate in a training program. He will also identify ten internal system representatives across criminal justice offices for the same program, to provide a collaborative learning experience.

The goal is to give the fellows a shared language on long-term systemic and institutional racism to take back to their everyday work. The big challenge, Derrick said, is helping people to see how their day-to-day work fits into the bigger picture so that they are more empowered to advocate successfully for change.

“Many organizations dealing with jail and justice and men and women going to jail get consumed with issues of the day,” he said. “Feeding, housing, getting jobs–those very important things. It takes a lot to get to the deeper issues of systemic racism when people’s lives are at stake every day.”

In that context, building an understanding of long-term systemic racism is crucial if Cook County’s justice system can move forward, Derrick said. From colonialism to slavery, “the jails would not exist today if it were not for systemic and institutional racism,” he said.  “The more folks we can get to think about these issues systemically and institutionally, perhaps the next generation will have less of a slog than we have. Otherwise, we will be in the same place 20 or 30 years from now as we are today.”

Supporting Community Engagement in New Orleans

New Orleans convened an Ethnic and Racial Disparity Working Group in 2020 to set goals to reduce justice system involvement for people of color. Half of the group were government agency staff and half were community members, and it analyzed disparities across the justice system. It came together quickly with commitment from all players and published a report in just 10 months with concrete recommendations supported by all the agencies and community members involved. The report recommended regular and authentic engagement by system stakeholders with system-impacted individuals. The group also recommended making grants to BIPOC-centered organizations to try innovative approaches to criminal legal system prevention and reform efforts.

New Orleans’ racial equity cohort is taking the next step in that process with the creation of a Blueprint for Racial Justice and Criminal Legal System Reimagination through data-driven analysis and community engagement. The City of New Orleans is partnering with nonprofit Total Community Action on the community engagement work.

“Our mission is to reduce poverty,” said Glenis Scott, Director of Community and Energy Services at Total Community Action. “And oftentimes when you’re working in the judicial system, both the adult and juvenile judicial system, we find it’s important to work with low-income families to ensure that there’s a path forward. When you’re looking at reentry from the judicial system or at housing funding, or at low-income food and energy programs, what we’re really trying to do is help people build a better life for themselves. Having the funding available to help educate people and provide supportive services is paramount if we’re going to be able to change what is happening inside the system right now. And that’s what the voice of the community is talking about. These systems are interconnected.”

New Orleans is also looking to convene leaders in the system around what the future looks like from a policy perspective, said Kate Hoadley, Racial Justice Program Manager at the City of New Orleans.

“The country has come to terms with the need to rectify systemic racism,” she said. “But right now, in New Orleans, we are seeing a rise in community harm. Gun violence is up and many people are proposing different solutions. But key to fixing that rise in community harm is to talk about the systemic issues that underlie it, and those include systemic racism and poverty. This is the time for us to have those conversations on all sides.”