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Jails book and confine more than 10 million people every year in the United States. People incarcerated in jails can experience overcrowding, lack of resources, exposure to violence, and deteriorating physical and mental health.

In response to these harsh conditions and impacts on individuals, practitioners and policymakers have pushed to reduce the size of US jails. As part of this national movement to rethink jails, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation founded the Safety and Justice Challenge to provide support to local communities to tackle the misuse and overuse of jails. With financial and technical assistance support from MacArthur, over 50 cities and counties have implemented innovative strategies to reduce their local jail populations by releasing more individuals on pretrial release and reconsidering the use of jail for new bookings.

However, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020 forced cities and counties participating in SJC to reduce their jail populations even more to meet social distancing recommendations. Since COVID-19, data from SJC communities analyzed by the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governments (ISLG) consistently show that decreasing the jail population does not lead to violent crime. Additionally, across SJC cities and counties, most individuals released pretrial were not booked for a new crime, and it was even more rare for an individual to be re-booked for a violent offense. Combined, the data from SJC communities suggests reducing the size of the jails is not only possible but does not lead to a rise in crime broadly or a rise in violent crime, specifically.

This is especially true for Multnomah County, Oregon, which had remarkable declines in their jail population during COVID without a rise in violent crime. Capitalizing on existing SJC relationships, Multnomah County stakeholders implemented some new strategies but mostly relied on expanding the eligibility of existing SJC reforms to quickly reduce their jail population. At the same time, the county experienced decriminalization of drug use and 100 days of social unrest in protest of police brutality and systemic racism which created the destruction of several buildings and businesses. Combined, the decriminalization of drugs and protests increased the visibility of drug use, houselessness, and created a general sense of lawlessness across the county even though crime or violence did not increase. Now, four years after COVID-19 began and two years after of the passage of the decriminalization of drugs, Multnomah County residents are critical of criminal justice reform and pushing for standard criminal justice responses, like the reliance on jail.

A new research study produced by Justice System Partners delved into the experience and data in Multnomah County and made the following findings:

• The Value of the SCJ during COVID-19. Because Multnomah County was already working with SJC when COVID hit, staff had all the infrastructure in place to safely reduce their jail population. The county’s participation in SJC laid the groundwork and framework for stakeholders to meet and collaborate quickly. Although some new approaches were implemented, the county mostly expanded the eligibility of pretrial reforms they had previously implemented as part of SJC. These strategies include citation-in-lieu of arrest and booking; reducing jail admissions for community supervision violations; limiting warrants for recorded court absences; and expediting jail releases with manual review. Using various strategies, county stakeholders reduced the number of bookings throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and specifically experienced a steady decline in jail bookings across each of the subsequent four time periods.
• Reaffirming evidence on violent crime and using jails effectively. Reducing the reliance on jails did not lead to an escalation of jail bookings for violence broadly. Nor did it lead to an escalation of jail bookings for violence by individuals with a history of violent charges. The individual demographic composition of the jail remained relatively the same throughout the study period. However, the composition of the charges booked into jail changed significantly. Overall, the jail experienced a lower proportion of bookings for low-level and non-violent charges, demonstrating that during the two years following the start of the pandemic in March 2020, stakeholders relied on the jail for booking more serious charges. Bookings for violent charges did not increase during the pandemic, demonstrating that reducing bookings for low-level charges does not lead to an increase in violent charges. The composition of jail bookings shifted during the period of social unrest in the summer and fall of 2020, with a greater proportion of jail bookings associated with behavioral charges (such as disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and harassment, among others). The jail held fewer people overall and fewer numbers of individuals were booked with a violent offense. However, what was booked was more often for a violent offense. Therefore, the proportion of violence charges in the jail increased, but not necessarily the number of violent charges. This suggests the county began relying on jail predominately for violent offenses charges – a more effective use of its jail.

• Perceptions of safety extend beyond classic definitions of violence. During the study period, community and justice system staff members reported a decrease in perceptions of safety, largely from visibility of drug use and social disorder. Community stakeholders discussed their perceptions of safety differently than justice system staff, echoing earlier Safety and Justice Challenge research on the multifaceted concepts of “safety.” This suggests system staff stakeholders should aim to “frame conversations around community safety instead of public safety.” Perception of public safety is less about classic definitions of violence and more about the discomfort with physical and social disorder. Community members often discussed perception of seeing or experiencing more “violence” during COVID-19, but actually described physical and social disorder including property damage and drug use. In the summer of 2020, community members protested police brutality and the role of the justice system in communities following the murder of George Floyd. Interviews with community members indicate that there is a need for conversations about the term violence, including which individuals and what charges should be characterized as violent. As a field, we must grapple with how people who commit violence and systems that are violent may be interconnected.

• Staff wellness matters for sustainability of reform. COVID-19 brought an emphasis and renewed interest in physical and emotional well-being and health. As we work to heal communities impacted by the justice system, we must also consider the impacts of the system on staff, too. Staff experienced significant workplace trauma from social unrest and still showed compassion for the need to reduce reliance on jails. Staff who experienced harms are still healing yet responsible for sustaining the work. There are significant challenges with tasking the people who experienced workplace trauma to champion reforms without acknowledgment or space for healing.

The experiences and data from Multnomah County during this period serve as valuable guiding principles for other communities looking to navigate the complex terrain of justice reform with equity, efficiency, and humanity.

The Just Home Project–a partnership between MacArthur and the Urban Institute–is expanding to support community-driven efforts to break the link between homelessness and incarceration in more cities and counties. Participating communities will receive grant funding to create a plan to disrupt the cycle of homelessness and continued engagement with the criminal justice system, with technical support and coordination from the Urban Institute.

$3 million in funding will directly support the work in selected communities, and $2.7 million will support the Urban Institute’s technical assistance work and its coordination of the program. At the end of their planning process, each community will be eligible to apply for additional funding from MacArthur to implement their plan and acquire or develop housing for populations that are not currently served by existing housing resources.

The following communities have joined the Just Home Project:

• Philadelphia, PA
• Allegheny County, PA
• Milwaukee, WI
• Buncombe County, NC
• Missoula County, MT

They join four communities selected in 2022: Minnehaha County, SD; Tulsa, OK; San Francisco, CA; and Charleston, SC.

At the heart of every policy change, every system overhaul, and every reform initiative are the lives of real people. There are the individuals who drive the systemic change forward and the individuals whose lives are fundamentally altered by its implementation.

Criminal justice reform is no different. As part of its national work to reduce jail populations across America since 2015, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) has affected people’s lives in real ways. By reducing reliance on jails, SJC makes it easier for people to be an active part of their families’ lives, work and go to school, all of which contribute to building safer communities and a more just society.

One area where the criminal justice system has lagged is in the health outcomes of incarcerated people. As part of broader efforts to address health system inequities, there is new focus on supporting the health needs of people who are transitioning from incarceration back into the community. Until now, the health care system for people who are incarcerated has been fragmented and inadequate. Many individuals struggled with the abrupt loss of Medicaid benefits during incarceration, leading to gaps in critical medical and behavioral health care at release from jail. These gaps often result in worsening health conditions, increased risk of death upon release (especially from overdose), difficulties securing employment and housing, and a higher risk of re-incarceration. The absence of coordinated care and support systems perpetuated cycles of instability and repeated contact with the criminal justice system.

Increasingly, states are leading efforts to use Medicaid to build continuity of care at release, and California is the first state in the nation to do so. California made history in January 2023 as the first state to receive approval from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for a Medicaid Reentry Section 1115 Demonstration Opportunity. Ten additional states have recently been approved by CMS to implement their own, similar waivers and thirteen states have also proposed waivers. California’s efforts, the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) Justice-Involved Initiative, aim to ensure that people transitioning from incarceration back into the community receive continuous medical and behavioral health care. As of October 1, 2024, the first three California counties have gone live to provide prerelease services and behavioral health links. This marks a significant leap in addressing the complex health needs of individuals reentering the community, fostering unprecedented collaboration between criminal justice and healthcare systems.

But what does this change mean for real people, both individuals with lived criminal justice experience and the practitioners dedicated to their care?

“When medical benefits are hooked up, it can save lives,” said Joe Calderon, Manager of Recruiting and Training with reentry program Urban Alchemy, and a person with lived experience of incarceration, in San Francisco. “We’re talking about people who historically aren’t trustful of systems and who haven’t had access to medical [services]. When we have a program using community health workers, we’re able to bridge the biases that prevent people getting access to care.”

For individuals leaving incarceration, this change can be considerably life-altering. The CalAIM Justice Involved initiative intends to transform the reentry experience, moving from a fragmented and often inadequate system to one that prioritizes continuous care and support. Historically, individuals faced numerous challenges upon reentry. “We need to make the correct connections with the system. The CalAIM benefit being there is important, but we also need organizations to help build relationships so that people can show up for care,” Joe noted.

Under the new waiver, the landscape will change. Medicaid benefits will now become active prior to a person’s release, improving sustained access to necessary medications and medical supplies. Individuals will be provided with transitional care plans, including pre-release services and connections to community-based providers. The availability of support systems, such as case managers and continuity of access to health and behavioral health care, and housing assistance, aids individuals in rebuilding their lives. By enhancing the continuity of care during the critical transition back to the community, this initiative will not only improve health outcomes but also offer hope for breaking the cycle of incarceration.

“When it comes to medical benefits, the honey might be there to be accessed, but we need to help people get into the honeypot,” Joe acknowledged. “There are a lot of competing priorities around reentry and medical matters, and medical often gets forgotten.”

Others are more skeptical about the program and want to make sure that those implementing it avoid perpetuating inequities and acknowledge the system’s history of harm and broken trust.

“As a formerly incarcerated person, I know what it’s like to transition back into the community,” said Aminah Elster, CEO of Proximate Strategies Consulting. “For some people, I think CalAIM might be beneficial, but it’s only a small subset of those incarcerated. It only covers the last 90 days of incarceration.”

Earl Simms, CEO of Restorative Community Solutions and a person with lived carceral experience, has been involved in some of the discussions about CalAIM over recent months.  He has concerns about the system’s ability to build the trust needed to successfully implement these changes. “I think the continuity of care idea is amazing,” he said. “But we need to be careful not to be too excited about this program because we need to have trusted, credible messengers involved in managing the delivery.”

It’s crucial to remember that at its core, this initiative is about people – particularly the people who will experience these transformative changes. The advisory insight from people with lived expertise can make a tangible impact on the efficacy of the innovations practitioners are making. However, to do this, practitioners must make a dedicated effort to consistently seek, incorporate, and uplift these voices at various stages of the implementation process. Earl’s concerns about credible messengers are important to take into consideration. “I’ve not seen the brainstorming around the new program include more voices like mine, I’ve not seen people with lived experience included in thinking about where the gaps might be. It would be good to have an oversight committee including people with lived experience to help us course correct when things go awry.”

The implementation of the Medicaid 1115 reentry waiver represents a shift in how we approach health care for justice-involved individuals that recognizes health care as a crucial component of successful reentry. It hinges not just on the policy changes, but on the human connections and systems built to support these changes. Practitioners across criminal justice and healthcare fields, including county health, jail operations, correctional health, and managed care plans, are forging new relationships and developing communication pathways that were previously minimal or non-existent. This collaboration between justice and healthcare practitioners, along with the involvement of individuals with lived expertise, also helps to create a system that is informed by the people they aim to serve. Ultimately, these bridges are building a framework that prioritizes human connection and continuity of care.

For more information on the Medicaid Reentry Section 1115 Demonstration Opportunity, the CalAIM JI initiative and its implementation, we encourage you to read the full papers released by Justice System Partners (JSP) and The Health and Reentry Project (HARP). Together, we can work towards a more just, equitable, and human centered approach to reentry that helps transform lives and communities.

Link to the paper: Implementing the Medicaid Reentry Waiver in California.

–Special thanks to Joe Calderon, Manager of Recruiting and Training with Urban Alchemy, Aminah Elster, CEO of Proximate Strategies Consulting, and Earl Simms, CEO of Restorative Community Solutions.

Since 2015, we’ve worked with the Safety and Justice Challenge in communities across the country to develop, implement, and study tailored strategies to safely reduce jail populations. Now, we’re embarking on a new effort to synthesize that research into the next generation of reform priorities—and better understand how to effectively reduce racial and ethnic disparities.

The Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, has been commissioning research in communities to answer the question of “what works?” in criminal legal reform across the nation for nearly a decade. From its inception, the SJC has relied heavily on data to develop reform strategies and assess progress toward initiative goals across participating sites. Data are also used to develop research and lessons learned for the larger criminal legal field, as a way to advance fair and effective reform work on a broader scale. The SJC Research Consortium (Consortium), managed by CUNY ISLG, was established in 2019 to develop and carry out research.

Synthesizing Research into New Priorities for Criminal Legal Reform

To honor the upcoming decennial milestone, in 2023 we began leading an entirely new work stream in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation and its affiliates to review and summarize lessons learned from across SJC-funded research projects and initiatives. The goal of this SJC synthesis work is to tap into our unique bird’s eye view to identify issues within the SJC research priorities that inform our work and the field at large.

As part of this new work, we are cataloguing and reviewing all SJC-funded research to better understand this collective knowledge, including important lessons on how to change systems, what impacts reform strategies have on individuals and communities, and how to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities. As the SJC continues to fund work through its various mechanisms, we will add new findings to our synthesized learnings to keep current on what know about achieving a more just and equitable criminal legal system, so that we can use this knowledge to drive our collective work.

The recently published Research Year in-Review offers a preview of the first chapter of our journey. It presents some common themes and preliminary findings related to the Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities research priority area that has guided SJC work. As this work is in its earlier stages, the learnings shared there and summarized here are not inclusive of all research funded by the SJC to date, and findings will continue to be expanded throughout 2024.

Even during preliminary synthesis stages however, several themes emerged:

• Racial and ethnic disparities won’t naturally fall with general reduction in jail populations. Specially targeted efforts are required to achieve this.

• Restrictions on who can participate in programming like diversion and deflection—also known as eligibility criteria— pose significant barriers to services, program buy-in and uptake, and create multiple forms of bias leading to disparate outcomes.

• At the aggregate level, progress on reducing racial and ethnic disparities has not been made as quickly as progress in reducing jail populations, but research has uncovered a myriad of ways that harms have been reduced for BIPOC individuals enmeshed with the criminal legal system.

• Programs with multiple participation/completion requirements can be counterproductive to the goals they are trying to achieve.

• Deflection rates are not always equitable, but do keep individuals out of the criminal legal system—especially those with mental health and substance abuse disorders.

• Diversion programs are showing preliminary, but positive results for the Black juvenile population, and have the potential to reduce disparities for new convictions and new jail admissions.

• Population Review Teams do have the potential to reduce racial and ethnic disparities, but the small number of cases reviewed each year lead to minimal impacts. However, strict eligibility criteria can actually create disparities in terms of who’s cases are selected for review.

• Bail reform can reduce disparities by ensuring that more defendants are being Released on Recognizance (ROR) for certain types of cases during the pretrial phase. Additionally, eliminating cash bail reduces the burden of paying bail which typically falls to BIPOC individuals that cannot afford it.

• Black individuals tend to be incarcerated more than any other group for probation violations. Programs that are meant to expedite release for those detailed for violations can have significant impacts on Black individuals.

• Findings on pleas are mixed, but indicate that Black individuals tend to face worse plea outcomes, especially for drug and weapon offenses.

• The role and presence of a defense provider at bond hearings can lead to more equitable outcomes.

For more information about 2023 SJC research published, new projects launched, SJC media mentions, and more detailed information on synthesis work, visit the full 2023 Research Year-in-Review.

CUNY ISLG has launched a new process for soliciting ideas and approaches from SJC Consortium members – an opportunity to submit letters of intent (LOIS) to pitch research projects to the CUNY ISLG Consortium team! CUNY ISLG will now accept LOIs for research proposals from current Consortium members on a rolling basis throughout the calendar year. These LOIs are intended to be short 2-3 page submissions describing research ideas that touch on one more of the SJC priority areas and advance SJC research goals and objectives, particularly around knowledge development. The requirements and guidelines for submitting LOIs as well as information on the review process can be found here.

Criminal legal reformers are increasingly adopting a more holistic conception of safety, one where the goals of reducing crime, violence, and recidivism are necessary but not sufficient. This means extending the parameters of public safety investment beyond the traditional boundaries of the criminal legal system.

A new policy brief from the Center for Justice Innovation makes the case for why investment “upstream” of justice-system involvement—investment in and tailored to communities—is criminal legal reform and promotes community safety.

Los Angeles County, for example, may have quietly rolled out the next generation of criminal legal reform. Ballot Measure J, which was approved by voters in 2020 and is now the Care First Community Investment Spending Plan (CFCI), mandates that at least 10 percent of the county’s locally-generated, unrestricted funds—estimated to be between $360 million and $900 million in the first year alone—go toward direct investment in social services and community-based alternatives to incarceration. In establishing CFCI, the county declared it “time to structurally shift…budget priorities and reimagine Los Angeles County” to “address racial injustice, over-reliance on law enforcement interventions, limited economic opportunity, health disparities, and housing instability.”

If implemented well, CFCI will serve as a vision of community safety as part of a larger push for community justice. This vision runs counter to the status quo in most cities and counties, and it requires deeper investments in community-led programs and preventative services upstream from system-involvement.

Despite the conventional wisdom that contact with the criminal legal system deters crime, research tells a more complicated story. Even fleeting system-involvement can increase a person’s future risk of an arrest. As for longer periods of confinement, a recent meta-analysis of more than a hundred research studies concludes—as a matter of “criminological fact”—that incarceration has “no effect on reoffending or slightly increase[s] it when compared with noncustodial sanctions.”

Researchers have found that the bulk of the needs driving system-involvement include the need for familial support, stable employment, educational opportunities, and strong community ties—all needs most meaningfully addressed within the community.

A recent comprehensive review of evidence-backed strategies for reducing community violence cites a shortlist of effective measures, including improvements to neighborhood environments, efforts to promote anti-violence social norms, and youth engagement programs. These kinds of upstream strategies will not look the same in every community, and there is powerful evidence to support this locally-tailored approach.

A team led by Princeton University sociologist Patrick Sharkey found that “every 10 additional organizations focusing on crime and community life in a city with 100,000 residents leads to a nine percent reduction in the murder rate, a six percent reduction in the violent crime rate, and a four percent reduction in the property crime rate.”

And then there are the cost savings. In New York City, the comptroller calculated that the cost of jailing one person for one year was a staggering $556,539. If you are imagining the good that could be done if those public sums were redirected, consider that it costs less than one-thirteenth of that amount—$42,000—to provide supportive housing with services for the same period. In establishing CFCI, Los Angeles estimated that the almost $400 million it was spending annually to house roughly 900 youth in juvenile facilities could fund a full year’s tuition for more than 30,000 in-state students at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Yet across the country, city and county governments continue to focus on shoring up responses to crime rather than minimizing the need for these responses in the first place. With few exceptions, governments at all levels allocate the lion’s share of their budgets to law enforcement agencies, shouldering them with almost exclusive responsibility for community safety—along with sizeable investments in other “downstream” agencies such as pretrial services and probation departments. Even with compelling research evidence in hand, reformers have struggled to broaden the gaze of governments to include preventative intervention as a credible and effective use of public safety dollars.

There are encouraging signs, however. The City of St. Louis recently established an Office of Violence Prevention. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass has pledged to “hold people who commit crimes accountable,” but also “to take real steps to prevent crime from happening in the first place.” She is investing in the social and economic conditions impacting families via a new Office of Community Safety. In New York City, through a range of initiatives in historically disinvested communities, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice is working to “democratiz[e] public safety while removing systemic barriers that many residents have and continue to face.”

But we must go further. In pursuit of lasting impact, reformers—and their counterparts in government and philanthropy—must swim upstream toward the waters of community-led innovation. Does this approach to reform make the work more complex and less conducive to easy replication? Does it shift considerable power from system actors to community members? Will it change the world for the better? Yes, yes, and yes.