Issue: Results from the Safety and Justice Challenge Network

Report

Diversion Featured Jurisdictions Jail Populations May 26, 2022

Examining The Impacts Of Arrest Deflection Strategies On Jail Reduction Efforts

Shannon Magnuson, Cherrell Green, Amy Dezember, Brian Lovins—Justice System Partners

In 2015, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a multi-year initiative to reduce populations and racial disparities in American jails. To advance knowledge development grounded in a research agenda that explores, evaluates, and documents site-specific strategies to safely and effectively reduce jail populations and address racial and ethnic disparities, the Foundation engaged the Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG) at the City University of New York (CUNY) to establish and oversee an SJC Research Consortium. Consortium members are nationally renowned research, policy, and academic organizations collaborating with SJC sites to build an evidence base focused on pretrial reform efforts.

Reducing jail populations and the collateral consequences of the legal system requires jurisdictions to critically examine the practices bringing these populations through the criminal legal system's front door. It requires implementing opportunities to reduce reliance on citation or arrest/booking, especially for populations with serious mental health disorders (SMHD) or substance use disorders (SUD), while also providing individuals the help and referrals they need to be well. Police-led deflection allows police officers discretion to replace arrest with outreach to community-based service providers. In an effort to learn more about how police-led deflection strategies operate, ISLG funded Justice System Partners to conduct mixed-methods studies of deflection strategies in two SJC sites.

Using administrative data from local crisis centers and interviews with police officers in Pima County, AZ and Charleston County, SC, this mixed methods study aimed to understand how deflection of individuals with SMHD/SUD operates in both sites.

Key takeaways include:

• A parallel treatment revolving door to the legal system revolving door, which acknowledges the challenges of treatment initiation and engagement and provides individuals with SMHD/SUD with a "no wrong door" policy. This creates enhanced opportunities for treatment while eliminating collateral consequences of the legal system and jail for these vulnerable populations.
• Deflection first, arrest rare as both policy and principle connects vulnerable individuals to the services they need. At the same time, it lessens opportunities for implicit bias and non-clinical judgements about readiness for change to impact the decision to deflect.

In summary, when police departments deflect as the primary response, they no longer make access to treatment conditional or contingent. In both Charleston and Pima counties, an individual can agree to treatment, receive a police transport to the local crisis center, and then at the door decide not to enter with no legal consequences, meaning that the individual is not arrested for refusing to initiate treatment. The findings suggest support for the implementation of deflection strategies, as well as a need for agencies to critically examine inconsistencies in policies that may result in disparate outcomes. Ultimately, the study finds that deflection strategies can be used to facilitate access to the treatment revolving door, rather than the justice system revolving door.

Additional Downloads

• Charleston County Report
• Pima County Report

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Report

Data Analysis Diversion Featured Jurisdictions November 24, 2021

An Impact Evaluation Of The Misdemeanor Diversion Program in Durham County, North Carolina

Daniel S. Lawrence, Will Engelhardt, Storm Ervin, Rudy Perez, Urban Institute

In 2020 and 2021, with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge Research Consortium, the Urban Institute conducted in-depth process and impact evaluations of the MDP, the findings of which we summarize in this report. By conducting both types of evaluations, the research team was able to better understand the processes and context that led to observed impacts. In addition, this is the first time a third-party research organization has evaluated the program’s impact, and such an evaluation is critical to demonstrating the program’s usefulness.

Additional Downloads

• Summary

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Report

Data Analysis Diversion Young Adults July 7, 2021

A Process Evaluation of the Misdemeanor Diversion Program in Durham County, North Carolina

Will Engelhardt. Storm Ervin, Daniel S. Lawrence, and Rudy Perez at The Urban Institute

Before its Raise the Age legislation in December 2019, North Carolina was one of the few states that still automatically charged 16- and 17-year-olds as adults in its justice system. In 2013, led by then–chief district court judge Marcia Morey, a group of stakeholders from Durham County, North Carolina, started the Misdemeanor Diversion Program (MDP) to prevent 16- and 17-year-olds from entering the justice system. The first of its kind in North Carolina, the program began in March 2014 and expanded over time to include people of all ages. It has also been replicated in certain counties throughout the state. The MDP allows law enforcement officers in Durham County to redirect people accused of committing their first misdemeanor crime(s) to community-based services in lieu of citation or arrest. The purpose is to diminish unnecessary arrests and time in jail, and the collateral consequences associated with being charged with and potentially convicted of a crime. What is particularly unique about this program is that it occurs prearrest and precharge, meaning someone law enforcement officers may believe has committed a crime is not arrested or charged and does not formally enter the justice system in any way. In 2020 and 2021, with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge Research Consortium, the Urban Institute conducted an in-depth process evaluation of the MDP, the findings of which are detailed in this report. This process evaluation was one component of Urban’s research on the MDP; the research team is also conducting an outcome evaluation that will be described in a fall 2021 report.

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Report

Data Analysis Jail Costs Jail Populations June 22, 2021

Jail Decarceration and Public Safety

The CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance

This report provides an initial look at SJC’s decarceration strategies through a safety lens. More specifically, it explores how aggregate crime rates and returns to custody among people released from jail changed after the launch of SJC and the implementation of its decarceration strategies in sites through 2019. Overall, the findings suggest that decarceration strategies can indeed be crafted and implemented responsibly, without compromising public safety. In fact, public safety outcomes across SJC sites and in most individual sites remained relatively constant before and after the implementation of decarceration reforms.

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Report

COVID Data Analysis Jail Populations February 9, 2021

Jail Population Trends During Covid-19

The CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance

Throughout 2020, as the extensive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic became clear, many municipalities—including those participating in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) — implemented emergency measures to reduce their jail populations. This brief describes how those measures influenced jail populations in SJC sites between February and October 2020. Specifically, the charts and explanatory text that follow illustrate how jail populations and racial and ethnic disparities changed during the pandemic’s early months. The brief is divided into three sections: overall trends, trends by race and ethnicity, and disparities.

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