Topic: Collaboration

Over the last three decades, the U.S. government has dramatically expanded the jails and jail-like facilities where it incarcerates undocumented immigrants as they await a determination of their legal status.

Ever since, detainees have complained of terrible food, low wages, and abuses from guards. Local governments often rent local jail beds to ICE, despite the fact that ICE’s supervising agency published a report declaring county jails “the most problematic facilities for immigrant detention.”

Efforts at meaningful reform have punctuated multiple presidential administrations. One such attempt coalesced into Alternatives to Detention, a program run by a private contractor that was paid tens of millions by ICE to provide alternatives in lieu of incarceration. One alternative, GPS ankle monitors, has proven especially controversial. In theory, the practice is cheaper and could lessen reliance on detention. But what’s the actual impact on the more than 36,000 undocumented immigrants who wear ankle monitors?

To find out, at first I looked online—but I found very little that spoke of the actual experience of wearing an ankle monitor. Not surprisingly, most people—documented or undocumented—don’t broadcast having an ankle monitor. I’d later hear that’s mostly because of the stigma of wearing one. In reporting my piece for the podcast 70 Million, I heard anecdotes of a neighbor calling their landlord to get an undocumented person with an ankle monitor evicted and of sales staff at a superstore following an undocumented person with an ankle monitor to make sure they didn’t steal anything.

I then took a more hands-on approach and called immigration attorneys. One connected me to his client, Marvin Franco.

I met Marvin at his apartment in East Palo Alto, CA. He told me how he and his family escaped gang threats in El Salvador, only to be detained in the United States. Marvin said the days in the detention center near Oakland were some of the hardest he’d ever known, separated from his wife and daughter.

When he got out, ICE required him to wear an ankle monitor. As we spoke, Marvin motioned to an electrical outlet in the wall. He’d leave the bracelet charging all night so it could last a full day in his job as a gardener. But he couldn’t move while asleep, or it would disconnect from the wall.

“It was very, very difficult to have a monitor,” he said. “It’s something inhuman. We’re not animals.”

I found that folks like Marvin craved for their stories to be told—and have them told the right way. They wanted every aspect of ankle monitors explored. In case the obvious needs to be stated: undocumented immigrants are not one monolithic group with a singular opinion. For instance, whereas most I talked to would rather wear the ankle bracelet over being incarcerated, one man found the monitor so stressful that he actually preferred detention.

The same couldn’t be said of the companies that placed undocumented folks in ankle monitors. I never received responses from GEO Group or Libre By Nexus following my requests for data or for comment on my reporting.

Instead, I relied on what was publicly available, like dull quarterly earnings conference calls. In order to stay positive for their investors, executives celebrated profits from incarcerating more undocumented individuals, by couching it in business jargon. “We expect the utilization of the [ankle monitor] program to remain stable in 2018,” said one GEO executive in 2017’s fourth quarter call.

To learn more about what it’s like to live with an ankle bracelet strapped to your leg, I reviewed documents provided by immigrants or their attorneys. The paperwork given to them by BI Inc., the subsidiary of GEO that runs the Alternatives to Detention program on behalf of ICE, opens with the following:

The GPS bracelet will not shock you.

The GPS bracelet is water resistant – you may shower/bathe as normal.

Charging a battery only takes 90 minutes.

But Marvin, along with other undocumented immigrants with ankle monitors I interviewed, said these directions can be inaccurate. The bracelet is often quite heavy, causing rashes. It’s been known to burn immigrants. Floricel Liborio Ramos, who spent 11 months in detention and then had to wear an ankle monitor, told me she couldn’t shower because the ankle monitor would start vibrating at random times or not work at all.

Marvin ended up wearing the bracelet for more than a year. Still, in order to be safe in the United States, he said he’d do it again. “In the end, it didn’t matter to me whether they put three or four ankle monitors on me, if I could be with my family.”

Ryan Katz is a reporter based in Austin whose work has appeared in ProPublica, Esquire, Topic, and The Daily Beast. For 70 Million, he reported on ankle monitors, devices that for-profit companies are contracting out to ICE to track undocumented immigrants. The open-source podcast is from Lantigua Williams & Co., and made possible by a grant from the Safety and Justice Challenge at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Local jails admit nearly 11 million people every year, a number that has almost doubled since 1978. Most people are released within a few days, but being detained can lead to serious consequences: job and housing loss, more punitive sentences, reduced social mobility, future criminal behavior, worsened health, and weakened familial and social bonds. These consequences are severe for those entering jail who are already disadvantaged, whether because of mental illness, substance abuse, poverty, or other factors such as race and gender.

Forming the Innovation Fund

Recognizing these severe effects of jail incarceration, jurisdictions nationwide are rethinking the use of jails and their local justice systems to make communities healthier, fairer, and safer. To further these efforts, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation partnered with the Urban Institute in 2016 to host the Innovation Fund under the Safety and Justice Challenge. The Innovation Fund supported a cohort of 20 jurisdictions to implement bold and innovative ideas to reduce over-incarceration in jails and build capacity for future system change. The Innovation Fund demonstrated that small seed funding can achieve outsized impact for jail reform in diverse communities nationwide.

With $50,000 grants each, technical assistance from Urban Institute, and a peer learning network, Innovation Fund sites transformed their use of jails by shifting away from presumption of detention, increasing local capacity to understand their jail population, and expanding reform to traditionally overlooked populations.

Supporting alternatives to jail

Many Innovation Fund sites focused their efforts on supporting alternatives to jail and shifting away from presumption of detention. For instance, the Akron County Prosecutor’s Office implemented a felony summons initiative throughout Summit County, OH for people charged with non-violent, low-level felony offenses. Focusing on felonies generated concern locally, but the Akron Prosecutor’s Office secured leadership buy-in and trained over 4,000 officers in 10 agencies. To date, the county has issued over 700 summons. Polk County, IA used the opportunity to train officers in the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model; training increased rates of police drop-offs to crisis observation centers rather than the county jail or local hospital. Lastly, three jurisdictions used the Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) to better understand their criminal justice and mental health systems, and identify opportunities to safely divert people with behavioral health issues from needless involvement in the criminal justice system.

Understanding the jail population

Jurisdictions also transformed their use of jails by increasing local capacity to understand their jail population and overall justice system. Allegheny County, PA and San Francisco, CA tackled their data systems by building powerful data dashboards and analytic tools to monitor key points and influence decision-making. Campbell County, TN implemented the Service Planning Instrument for Women (SPIn-W), a gender-responsive assessment and case planning tool. Data from the SPIn-W allowed key stakeholders to better understand the needs and risk factors of women in their local jail, and make data-driven decisions on referrals for clients to services and programming.

Expanding jail reform to overlooked populations

Some jurisdictions expanded their jail reform efforts to populations often overlooked in justice system interventions. Buncombe County, NC developed and piloted an intimate partner violence (IPV) pretrial supervision protocol and deployed the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) for people with IPV charges on pretrial status. The county has seen jail bookings for people with IPV offenses drop by 10%. Missoula County, MT conducted interviews with incarcerated Native Americans to learn about cultural identity during detention and implemented culturally-specific programming in the jail. Recommendations from data collection have influenced strategic conversations about jail programming and reentry for Native Americans countywide.

Even with small seed funding, the Innovation Fund spurred meaningful change on justice system practices in 20 distinct communities and built a sustainable community of innovators over a year and a half, with impacts that continue to grow. We are excited to see what our sites will do next.

The Decision Points blog series explores the seven key decision points during the typical criminal case where choices can be made to reduce jail populations.

Hassan Aden is the Director of Research and Programs at the International Association of Chiefs of Police.  He has over 28 years of law enforcement service and previously served as the Chief of Police with the Greenville (NC) Police Department.

Building trust between law enforcement agencies and the people they serve has long been a priority for police leaders. Recently, heightened awareness of incidents of gross police misconduct, often amplified by new technologies, has helped lead to the creation of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, led by Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Laurie Robinson, which has provided a roadmap for law enforcement agencies to self-assess and begin focusing on areas where they have opportunities to improve on their service delivery and increase their legitimacy.

Less visible is a crisis in the criminal justice system that has already impacted generations of the poor, and mostly people of color. The staggering number of low-level, nonviolent offenders and mentally ill individuals who are behind bars is negatively impacting communities across the United States. Prisons and jails are overcrowded and underfunded, a combination that can be dangerous to both the inmates and corrections officials. Many jails have more than 70 percent nonviolent offenders within their walls, a majority of whom have not been convicted of the crime they are accused of—they simply cannot use the bail system to get out because they are indigent.

Like the multi-step roadmap provided by the president’s taskforce, there is no singular solution to the crisis in local justice systems that many communities face. Only by focusing on the criminal justice system holistically can we help prevent unnecessary jail stays and reduce the problem of mass incarceration. Modern police leaders must view their role in the criminal justice system as an opportunity to build trust among the community they serve and increase their agency’s legitimacy. They should carefully review how the system is linked and how well all of the parts work together. The typical criminal case trajectory is set in motion at the point at which an officer decides to make an arrest, and continues through the reentry process. To help stem the flow of people into the criminal justice system, we must ensure appropriate decision making at the point when officers are faced with whether or not to make an arrest, which is facilitated by including the option to issue citations in lieu of arrest when possible. We must also incorporate diversion options once an arrest occurs, including for mentally ill individuals and low-level drug offenders. Many law enforcement agencies around the country are already employing effective alternatives to arrest that have made a difference in jail populations—but in far too many communities this is not yet the norm.

Although the criminal case trajectory operates in distinct stages, police leaders can and should engage at more points in the system than that of arrest. They also must train their officers on how the criminal justice system impacts their work and their relationship with the community—their decisions and use of discretion matter. Police leaders seeking to make changes to their daily practices can look to national initiatives working to encourage and disseminate successful efforts made by local jurisdictions. The MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge is one such initiative that works to change the way America thinks about and uses jails by supporting a network of competitively selected local jurisdictions who are finding ways to safely reduce their jail populations. By shedding light on the overuse of jail and the power held by police to make changes, law enforcement leaders can help reduce unnecessary jail stays while building the trust of the communities they serve.

Note: This piece also ran on the Huffington Post (“Decision Points: Police Should Engage in Local Justice System Reform to Build Trust and Strengthen Communities”).

Bringing about change in criminal justice systems takes the concerted effort of all system actors. Such an ambitious undertaking can be greatly facilitated by charging a coordinating body with opening lines of communication, building collaborative interagency relationships, and creating a shared vision and blueprint for meaningful reform. A criminal justice coordinating council (CJCC) is the general term used to describe such bodies. CJCCs are comprised of elected and appointed senior justice system leaders who convene on a regular basis to coordinate systemic responses to justice problems. They also often serve as an effective means to reduce duplication of effort and conflicting practices and improve how local jurisdictions allocate limited justice system resources.

CJCCs began emerging as early as the 1970s to help forge systemic responses to specific problems facing local jurisdictions. Since then, jurisdictions all over the country have either created CJCCs because of jail population issues directly or have made jail population a major focus of their work through establishing a dedicated subcommittee. While jail overcrowding seems like a very specific problem to solve and then move on from, it is actually a systemic condition that needs continual consideration. As the National Institute of Corrections’ former director Morris Thigpen stated in a seminal publication on CJCCs, “[W]hat a community was treating as solely a ‘jail problem’ was, instead, a system wide condition requiring an intergovernmental and interagency response.”

A few examples from across the nation illustrate the impact that a CJCC can have on jail population over time:

In Jefferson County, Kentucky (Louisville), a local commission has been working on jail crowding issues since the 1980s. Because of its early efforts and decision to focus on alternative programs instead of jail expansion, the commission was able to delay adding jail beds, reduce the total population, and implement a number of successful programs over the years. These programs include the creation and expansion of electronic monitoring including GPS, a day reporting center, a Misdemeanant Intensive Probation Program, screening and post-booking diversion programs targeting individuals with serious and persistent mental illness, problem-solving courts, pretrial supervision, and initiatives to expedite case processing.

Clinton County, Iowa originally formed the Clinton County Justice Coordinating Commission (CCJCC) in response to jail overcrowding, with the goal to better manage the jail population and improve data collection and analysis. Although its efforts did not eliminate the need for a new jail, the CCJCC was able to substantially reduce the associated cost. A needs assessment found that Clinton County saved millions of dollars in avoided construction costs and even more in reduced operational costs because they were able to build a jail with 22 percent fewer beds.  According to Clinton County Sheriff Rick Lincoln, they were able to achieve this because they “identified the offender population that we are just mad at but who aren’t dangerous to society,” such as “those individuals that have been convicted of a misdemeanor type of crime without a victim, such as public intoxication.” He also explained that they are no longer using jail beds for reasons such as non-payment of fines.

Denver, Colorado reduced its jail population by more than 500 people per day since 2009, due in large part to the efforts of the Crime Prevention and Control Commission. The commission’s many initiatives—such as drug court, sobriety court, a jail diversion program, reentry program, and increased use of pretrial supervision—were born of its hard work providing the data to show what was needed; designing and fundraising for the programs; and ongoing quality control and evaluation of the impact of their programs.

In Eau Claire County, Wisconsin, the CJCC is dedicated to the development of multidisciplinary strategies to prevent jail overcrowding and improve criminal justice system effectiveness.  Through initiatives started within the CJCC, such as the implementation of their pre-charge diversion program and the National Institute of Corrections’ Evidence-Based Decision-Making initiative, jail is imposed as a condition of probation only as a last resort. Also, because of another CJCC initiative—the Community Transition Center (CTC)—Eau Claire County saved more than 17,000 jail bed days in 2014 and has had a significant impact on recidivism rates, with less than 30% of offenders who were sentenced to the CTC receiving new criminal charges within one year of successfully completing programming.

What is it about a CJCC that makes these examples of change possible?  While not all CJCCs are alike—nor should they be—they can each provide a foundation for partnerships in the criminal justice system and help to inspire communication, cooperation, and a collaborative effort towards system improvement.  To learn more about the factors that create local justice systems that prioritize the improvement of administrating justice, we analyzed eight counties that have been cited as having “highly effective” local justice systems in a new report, From Silo to System: What Makes a Criminal Justice System Operate Like a System?. We found that among the successful systems, a culture of collaboration was one of the main characteristics they shared. From a foundation of collaboration, lasting systemwide change is within reach.

More information and resources on CJCCs can be found on the National Network of Criminal Justice Coordinating Councils’ website.