Topic: Community Engagement

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.

Everyone wants to feel safe in their community. Yet, we know little about how people make sense of what community safety looks and feels like to them. Discussions among policy makers and the media often center on a very specific and limited conception of safety. It emphasizes crime rates as a key measure, and the criminal legal system as the primary means of achieving this goal.

But aspects of safety captured by criminal legal system data may not align with community priorities or values. Allowing communities to define what safety means to them enables them to tailor this definition to their needs and values. It allows them to identify their own priorities for action, helping to advance the goal of safety for all.

A new report explores the meaning of community safety for people who live and work in three US counties. Each county faces some challenges that impact views of safety. Missoula County, Montana; St. Louis County, Missouri; and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina are all currently working on interventions around crime and community safety funded, in part, through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation‘s Safety and Justice Challenge initiative.

In Missoula, there is general agreement that the physical and social environment is rapidly changing. Housing-related concerns and the visibility of the unhoused population dominate conversations around safety. Part of these changes are due to an influx of new residents and associated increases in home prices, making basic needs less affordable even for people with stable employment. At the same time, many perceived that the unhoused population was growing in visibility because of a higher prevalence of drugs, a limited supply of low-income housing, and difficulty accessing mental health and substance use treatment services.

In St. Louis, violence is a significant concern for area residents. Like in many places, aggravated assaults and homicide rose at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Concerns about violence are exacerbated by the county’s proximity to St. Louis City, which has high rates of these crimes. St. Louis County’s high level of fragmentation creates many challenges for community safety as it hinders the ability to address crime and safety-related concerns in a coordinated fashion. Black county residents, particularly those residing in North County, are disproportionately impacted by crime and the criminal legal system.

Violence is also a significant concern for residents of Mecklenburg County. Violence, particularly aggravated assault, and homicide, increased rapidly from 2018 through 2020, before leveling off and falling; however, violence, particularly gun violence, continues to be a significant safety related concern for people in Mecklenburg County. Other forms of violence, including among youth and police violence, are also viewed as serious concerns.

An analysis of local newspaper coverage of crime trends found that media reports often attributed increasing violence to root social causes (e.g., mental health issues, substance use, poverty); however, the solutions presented were just as or more likely to rely on the criminal legal system. Further, individuals who work for the courts, law enforcement, and government were quoted most frequently, while the perspectives of system-impacted individuals were rare. Although many factors shape news coverage, these selective narratives have significant sway over public perceptions of violence.

To develop a new conceptualization of community safety, we asked people what this term means to them. We solicited a group of local stakeholders to help organize and make sense of these responses. They generated a Community Safety Concept Map. It has 11 components grouped into five domains or “regions”:

1. Personal safety and security;
2. Thriving and socially connected community;
3. Resources and services for a socially and economically just community;
4. Responsive and effective government and public safety agencies;
5. Systems for preventing and addressing harm.

Personal safety and security are at the heart of community safety for most people, yet the types of harm and day-to-day hassles that concerned people varied based on life experiences. These differences underscore that conversations about community safety must be inclusive and include the perspectives of marginalized groups, as their safety concerns may require a different set of policies and actions.

On average, people rated all the components of community safety as important or very important. Recognizing the overlap of safety with other community priorities, such as ensuring that everyone has their basic needs met and an equal opportunity to lead a stable life, can help promote and sustain collaboration among agencies.

Several key recommendations emerged from the work:

Language is important. Framing conversations around “community safety” Instead of “public safety” may help people think more expansively about what safety looks like and how to achieve this goal. Redefining community safety in this way has the potential to reveal the broader historical forces that create and sustain inequalities in accessing safety.

Educate people on what a more inclusive and equitable vision of safety can look like. While low rates of violence and feeling secure are key components of community safety, it is much more than that. The methods used in the report can help residents and stakeholders see a range of possibilities that move beyond a focus on crime statistics.

Identify local priorities and structure future action steps using the Community Safety Concept Map that was generated from this research. This map is designed to be a dynamic tool to engender discussions about safety and to ensure that a holistic perspective is being considered by a multitude of stakeholders (e.g., community groups, local leaders, educators).

Collect data from a representative group of community members, making sure to include the perspectives of groups who are most impacted by crime and the criminal legal system. This includes unhoused individuals, people of color, and other minoritized groups as well as people who work in the criminal legal system. Rural communities may have unique perspectives on safety and should be included in any effort of this type.

Make information on community safety readily available, so that it can be used by a variety of stakeholders. All three counties have ongoing data collection efforts that can be leveraged to measure various components of community safety identified in this study. Creating a dashboard or website that brings together these data and makes them easily accessible can empower communities to assess their own progress toward achieving safety.

When resident input is solicited, ensure there is follow-up, so people know how the information is being used. For example, local stakeholders could partner with the media to describe what is being done to address safety-related concerns and how the community can contribute to these efforts.

Replicate this work focusing on the experiences of youth. Youth are an important part of the community that we were not able to reach in this study, and they likely have very different views than older community members. From an equity and representation perspective, it is important to consider their views.

Conduct this work on a regular basis to keep up with shifting priorities. Changes in the demographic or economic profile, like what happened during the COVID – 19 pandemic, can change community perceptions. Views on safety are dynamic and should continue to be reassessed.

The Prioritizing and Measuring Community Safety Toolkit associated with this work provides a step-by-step guide for local communities interested in reimagining community safety.

Hand the microphone to individuals closest to the problem to illuminate overlooked areas of safety that are often taken for granted or absent from mainstream discussions about this issue. Moving forward, communities can benefit from local conversations that are more centered on advancing safety for all than narrow crime-oriented definitions that are just one component of how people experience and think about safety.

Bria Gillum, Senior Program Officer, Criminal Justice for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Aswad Thomas, Vice President of the Alliance for Safety and Justice (ASJ), appeared at The Atlantic Festival 2023 in Washington, D.C., in a talk entitled “How to Invest in Safety and Well-Being.” It was part of a session underwritten by the MacArthur Foundation on criminal justice reform.

Bria interviewed Aswad, who survived a robbery attempt that left him with two life-altering gunshot wounds, about his experience as a survivor of violence, and his journey to embrace the Trauma Recovery Center (TRC) model of addressing the needs of crime survivors, who often face the biggest barriers to accessing healing services.

After Aswad left the hospital with his gunshot wounds, there were no support services, or even information about where to look.

“My story might sound unique, but it’s not unique at all,” he said at the conference. “In this country, three million people are crime victims every year, but only nine percent of people get access to victim services.”

Thomas began organizing crime victims and advocating for victims’ rights, and today he is working to expand the ASJ’s national network of crime survivors to elevate their voices in criminal justice reform.

“When you think about the criminal justice system, the voices of crime victims like me have never been at the center of criminal justice policies,” he said. “One thing that we are trying to do is to elevate this new victims’ rights movement, this is calling for new safety solutions to help stop the cycle of violence.”

In addressing this need for advocacy, services, and resources, Aswad spoke about his organization’s TRC model as a “one-stop shop that provides you with all of the recovery services that you need, without all of the red tape.” The first center was developed at San Francisco General Hospital in 2001. Today, there are 52 TRCs in the United States.

He said community is at the heart of what ASJ does. “What we do is we build community,” Aswad said. “We build community with survivors, providing peer-to-peer support. We build community with law enforcement, with advocates, with legislators, and we build that community so that we can start having conversations around our public safety policies.”

Aswad shared some of ASJ’s accomplishments. “In the past 10 years, we passed about 91 criminal justice and public safety reforms across the country. We’ve changed victim compensation programs in about ten states. We’re helping to provide more protections for victims to be safe from employment protections and housing and protections.”

Another area of advocacy for ASJ is criminal justice reform. “Across this country, crime victims are now organizing to change criminal justice policies,” he said. “Past reforms have reduced incarceration and helped to incentivize more rehabilitation for folks who have caused harm. But also working on reforms to remove the barriers for people coming out of the justice system and back into our communities. We also passed laws, so [that crime victims can] access housing, jobs, education, things that help promote stability. Those are the things that help keep communities safe as well.”

In response to a question from Bria about what it means to be safe in your community, Aswad asked the audience to close their eyes and think about where they feel most safe.

“Is it a garden? Is it at church? Is it with family? Think about where you feel most safe. The majority of us in this room, I don’t think we say more police, or that we feel safe with more prisons. We feel more safe in community with each other. So that’s what we need to invest in, more Trauma Recovery Centers, more mental health programs, more solutions to help stop the cycle. That’s how we actually get to true safety in this country.”

You can watch the full conversation on YouTube.

It has now been just over a year since the U.S. government allotted approximately a billion dollars to roll out a new nationwide phone number, 988, to call when people need help with a mental health crisis or behavioral health support. The goal of the initiative is to divert individuals in crisis to community-based services, including stabilization centers, rather than encounter law enforcement.

Over the past year, my organization has run a bimonthly virtual learning community for criminal justice systems around the country to help them with this transition. Twenty-eight sites involved in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge have attended the meetings focusing on operationalizing the 988 phone lines and associated crisis stabilization centers in their communities.

The mission of the SJC is to lower jail populations in participating communities across the country so the goals of the 988 system are aligned. It is still difficult to empirically measure how many people are staying out of jail because of 988. If someone avoids arrest and is instead diverted to a stabilization center or other community-based service after a 988 call, instead of a 911 call, there is simply no arrest in the public record. Still, the usage of the 988 lines has been promising.

In the first year of implementation, people placed five million calls, chats, and texts to 988 across the country. That’s a 35 percent increase in calls to the federally run suicide prevention line (1-800-273-TALK) it replaced. It includes 665,000 texts, more than a 1,000 percent increase over texts to the old suicide prevention number. By simplifying the process of seeking assistance with a three-digit number, people are more likely to call.

In addition to serving as a Strategic Ally of the Safety and Justice Challenge, I have worked for the past 20 years as a mobile crisis response counselor in Southeast Nebraska. My role has been to assist community members in crisis, whether they are suicidal or homicidal. In the past year, I have seen and heard locally how the 988 number has eased the burden on overstretched law enforcement officers. However, there is now a workforce concern in the behavioral health field. As 988 lines become more successful, communities across America will need to address gaps in the behavioral health system. This is a significant challenge.

Some sites are advanced in their implementation of the 988 number and others are still coming up to speed. More populated states such as California have multiple 988 centers. Others, such as Nebraska, have just one. There are also some concerns about cell tower coordination. For example, if somebody with a Nebraska number calls 988 in California, there is still some concern that their call could route to a center in Nebraska by mistake. That costs time when individuals in crisis face emergencies, but we expect these concerns to be worked out soon.

Meanwhile, three examples of SJC sites and their experiences of implementing the 988 number are as follows:

• In Harris County, Texas, the first-year rollout has gone well. At first, there was some concern about the line being overwhelmed and the volume did increase significantly in the first few months. The staff have now acclimatized, and the system is proving effective.
• In Middlesex County, Massachusetts, stakeholders integrated 988 planning into their existing “Roadmap to Behavioral Health Reform” plan. Over 50 city dispatch centers in Middlesex County were previously surveyed—before the implementation of 988—to gather information on their call codes and who is dispatched for mental health-related calls. Findings demonstrated little consistency across these dispatch centers. There are currently five 988 call centers in Massachusetts, which is more than almost any other state and represents a significant investment in 988.
• In the “Embedding Equity into 988: National Scorecard,” only two states referenced reaching out to older adults. One of those two states is South Dakota. It is noteworthy that only South Dakota and Alaska specified strategies, materials, or efforts to reach older adults through their 988 implementation approaches since older adults are especially vulnerable to suicide or mental health crisis with causes ranging from grief, isolation, to chronic illness. In South Dakota, both Minnehaha and Pennington Counties are part of the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, with the two communities on opposite sides of the state.

Meanwhile, state legislators in more rural areas have shown a lack of knowledge about 988. They will be key allies in securing funding to support ongoing implementation, so it remains important for there to be more conversation and awareness building about the value of 988 as a public safety measure.

While there is clearly a good deal of work remaining across our states and territories until we can consider 988 to be fully implemented, there are positive signs in the first year of 988’s implementation. I expect that together, in the years ahead, we will continue to build on the momentum we have created so far and offer anyone in need of behavioral health supports and/or services an excellent alternative to first dialing 911.