Topic: Community Engagement

Prompted by recent cries for police reform across the U.S., many jurisdictions have made or promised significant changes to law enforcement funding, frequently allocating additional funding to behavioral health and community services. Many sites are exploring or expanding community-based emergency first response as an alternative to police response to individuals experiencing crisis and those with mental health needs.

As technical assistance providers to the Safety and Justice Challenge, Policy Research, Inc. (PRI) has compiled an ongoing list of examples of this shift across the country, to serve as a resource to other communities who may be considering their own reform.

Here are some examples of changes in SJC sites:

• Baltimore, Maryland: In June, the City Council approved a $22.4 million (less than 5%) cut to the Police Department’s $550 million 2021 budget, including nearly $7 million from overtime spending.
• Portland, Oregon: In late 2019, the city announced a similar program to CAHOOTS, Portland Street Response (PSR), which takes police off of low-priority 9-1-1 calls and instead sends a new branch of first responders, trained in behavioral health, to address issues related to people experiencing homelessness or mental health crises. In June, the Portland City Council approved $4.8 million funding for PSR, along with a 3% reduction (about $15 million) to the Portland Police Bureau budget.
• Los Angeles, California: In June, the Los Angeles City Council voted to cut $150 million (of an $1.8 billion total budget) from the city’s police department budget, halting a planned increase in funding. The $150 million will be redirected toward community-building projects and health and education initiatives in minority communities. ­In July, the city council announced plans to expand a pilot program to create a new police bureau focused on community policing, relying on guidance from community leaders, representatives from city hall, and others.
• New York City, New York: In July, the New York City Council approved shifting roughly $1 billion away from the $6 billion annual Police Department budget. The budget also shifts school safety and homeless outreach away from police. New York City’s Crisis Management System (CMS) program deploys teams of credible messengers who mediate conflicts on the street and connect high-risk individuals to services that can reduce the long-term risk of violence. In the last three years, the Crisis Management System has contributed to a 15% decline in shootings in the 17 highest violence precincts in New York City. In early June, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he plans to increase CMS spending by ten million dollars, hire additional workers, and expand programs to Soundview, Jamaica, Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Canarsie.
• Albuquerque, New Mexico: In June, the Mayor announced the formation of a new department, Albuquerque Community Safety, designed to relieve stress on the city’s police. Instead of the police or fire departments responding to 9-1-1 calls related to homelessness, addiction, and mental health, the new division will deploy unarmed personnel made up of social workers, housing and homelessness specialists, and violence prevention coordinators. Mayor Keller stated that the department’s creation will start with a focus on “restructuring and reallocating resources” that the city is already investing in different areas, saying he anticipated “tens of millions of dollars that will move” with the department’s creation.
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: In June, the City Council approved a 2021 fiscal year budget that reduced police department funding by $33 million and allocated $45 million into affordable housing, arts funding, and social services addressing poverty.
• San Francisco, California: In July, the Mayor announced a $120 million cut from the city police and sheriff’s departments over the next two years, redirecting funding toward addressing disparities in the Black community including in housing, mental health and wellness, workforce development, economic justice, education, advocacy, and accountability.
• Durham, North Carolina: In June 2019, the city council voted against hiring 18 new patrol officers after a public campaign led by Durham Beyond Policing. The city is now exploring a new “community safety and wellness task force” instead. While the city’s 2021 budget did include an increase of $1.2 million for the police department, $1 million was also added for a Community Health and Safety Task Force to “potentially take on some of the responsibilities of policing the city over time.”

Many jurisdictions around the country are also taking a hard look at the wisdom of continuing to place police in schools. Several SJC sites that have pledged to remove or removed police from schools include:

• Portland, Oregon: In June, the Portland Public Schools superintendent announced that it will discontinue the regular presence of SROs. New investments in counselors, social workers, and culturally specific partners were proposed.
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin: The Board of School Directors voted unanimously in June to terminate its contract with the Milwaukee Police Department in its public schools.
• Madison, Wisconsin: The school board voted unanimously in June to end its contract with the Madison Police Department for SROs.
• Portland, Maine: The school board voted in July to remove SROs from Deering and Portland High School. Money previously allocated for SROs will be diverted toward programs like “supporting security at large events and de-escalation training for staff.”

COVID-19 and the nationwide racial equity and justice protests over the past few months have shifted the ground beneath much of the advocacy and work that we do. We are faced with an opportunity and responsibility to not only respond to the changing landscape of criminal justice and behavioral health fields, but to advance reform.

—Ashley Krider is a Senior Project Associate at Policy Research, Inc.

Relationship-building and data-information-sharing have proven to be invaluable assets for our agency, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD). In recent years, our agency—like many others—began to struggle with funding, jail overcrowding, slowed case processing, and increased average-lengths-of-stay (ALOS). To better identify the root cause of the problems, we created a Population Analysis Unit in 2012:

• Our vision: to ensure the effective management of the jail population to prevent jail overcrowding.
• Our mission: to identify inadequacies within the criminal justice system using evidence-based approaches to reduce the number of people going into or being detained in our facility, the Clark County Detention Center (CCDC).
• Our goals: to create a system of checks and balances, and coordinated efforts so that the inmate population can consistently be monitored to promptly address any process delays.

It was through these efforts that we began to build and strengthen relationships with criminal justice partners who had a direct impact on our success. By reaching out and educating our partners on our challenges, we were able to gain their commitment to developing alternatives to incarceration and reducing the over-use of jail. Collectively, we understood the benefits and realized the only way to make improvements was by working together. Additionally, bringing together our criminal justice partners enhanced awareness that alternative solutions must be established to better protect and serve our community. Due in part to these efforts, Clark County was selected earlier this year as a Safety and Justice Challenge Innovation Fund site, to continue our work to reduce the county jail population.

To fulfill the data-sharing piece, we put together an Inmate Population Summary Report. Our deputy chief at the time was interested in identifying our population: who was here and why. During the creation of this report, we discovered our population was being impacted by other entities within the justice community. Thus this report is distributed throughout the justice community on a bi-weekly basis. The report identifies our current population to include our average daily population (ADP), ALOS, etc. This report is data-driven, and as such it spotlights areas of concern.

For example, our most recent report noted an increase in the number of incarcerated people in custody longer than one year compared to the last reporting period. This number has grown consistently each month. Currently, we have 16 incarcerated people who have been in custody for more than five years. By sharing this information, the court, public defender, and district attorney began to look into possible causes and solutions. As a result, the court recently established a “homicide” court to address those specific cases for the purpose of moving them through the process more quickly and efficiently.

CCDC INMATES IN CUSTODY MORE THAN 1 YEAR

There are a total of 408 inmates who have been in custody more than one year, four more than the last reporting period.

As noted by Anne Carpenter, major of the Nevada Department of Public Safety/Parole and Probation Division (NPP) Southern Command:

“I have been taking this information since I started 16 months ago and trying to find ways to improve NPP’s processes. For example, regarding our presentence investigation reports—from conviction to sentencing…the days that it takes our writers, on average, has now gone down to 46/47 days from the mid-50s…so we have improved…and this has assisted Clark County Detention Center with their overcrowding issues.”

We collectively understand that our challenges are not confined to our “jail” system. Working together, we have established various short-term solutions and continue to work toward solutions that are sustainable in the long term.

Lastly, each agency learned how to think about their own business process, and find ways to improve and streamline them. We identified and shared the various resources and services each of us could provide to enhance overall efficiency.

The prolonged outbreak of COVID-19 has drawn attention to the importance of integrating a public health framework to criminal justice system responses. In recent weeks, the need for this approach has only become greater following increases in arrests, particularly of protesters, in jurisdictions aiming to reduce jail populations as a response to increased health risks from COVID-19.

As a strategic ally in the Safety and Justice Challenge, the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys has partnered with a wide array of criminal justice stakeholders, including the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Center for HIV Law & Policy, and Community Oriented Correctional Health Services, to call for a public health-oriented approach to the COVID-19 crisis. You can read the principles here. Our key recommendations include releasing people who are incarcerated in compliance with clear public health recommendations and established public safety release criteria; limiting new admissions; addressing violations of COVID-19-related directives, such as the use of protective gear and social distancing, in a manner that is consistent with public health considerations rather than criminalization; drawing inspiration from existing innovations that promote the integration of public health priorities into the justice system; and making connections among public health organizations, researchers, and criminal justice stakeholders.

Two examples of SJC sites which have innovated to promote the integration of public health priorities into the justice system are Pennington County, South Dakota, and Deschutes County, Oregon:

• Pennington County’s “Care Campus” centralizes social services with a single point of entry in a co-located campus that streamlines everything, allowing individuals to immediately get the help they need. It houses a detox treatment, Safe Solutions program, Crisis Care Center, Quality of Life Unit, and Pennington County Health and Human Services, under one roof. The complex houses residential alcohol and drug treatment services, too. Individuals facing a crisis can walk in and do not need to wait for police to intervene. A recent study showed that 64 percent of admitted individuals were self-referred. This facility reduces the burden on the justice system and does not saddle people who need help with a criminal record.
• Deschutes County’s “Clean Slate Program” allows individuals the opportunity to remove arrest from their record and access a variety of services—including medical care and drug treatment—if they’re arrested or cited with possession of a controlled substance. Participants have the opportunity to meet with defense counsel privately to discuss their case and determine if they want to participate. The goal of this program is to identify the best intervention for each individual and shift the response strategy, providing a direct connection to health care and substance abuse treatment that could generate better sobriety and health outcomes.

Adopting a public health framework to inform public safety decisions is a critical intervention that has been successfully used by many public safety agencies in response to COVID-19, and should endure beyond this current crisis.

On behalf of our thoughtful and proactive prosecutors, we’re proud to partner with public health and safety stakeholders to develop key recommendations for a public health-oriented approach to the safety of incarcerated individuals, staff and our communities to keep all safe and healthy. The multi-disciplinary team of experts stand ready to provide resources and technical assistance to jurisdictions around the country who are creating actionable proposals to address these issues. These resources include, for example:

• Experts in development of successful public health/criminal justice interventions;
• Infectious disease experts and consultants within health departments across the country;
• Criminal law legislative and administrative law experts; and
• Experts in diversion programs and alternatives to incarceration.

We encourage jurisdictions looking to develop and implement actionable proposals for a public health framework for their criminal justice system response to pandemics such as COVID-19 to contact us for assistance and to be connected with our network of experts.

—Marlene Biener is Deputy General Counsel with the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys

The Coronavirus pulled back the curtain on racial disparities in Buncombe County’s jails.

We have been meeting, countywide, and working intentionally on these issues since November 2018.

Likewise, if America has learned anything from the death of George Floyd, it’s that systemic racism exists. If people are willing to address the question of how they contribute to it, then we’ll be able to meaningfully make progress all over the country.

I chair the 26-person-strong Buncombe County Criminal Justice Equity Workgroup in North Carolina. It has diverse membership from our pretrial, court, and government systems, as well as from the local community.

Our goals are to normalize and prioritize racial equity, giving a shared analysis and definitions; to operationalize those efforts by providing tools and data to develop strategies and drive results; and to organize internal infrastructure and partnerships to make it happen.

The data show a baseline disproportionality in racial representations within our jails: Black people represent 6.3% of Buncombe County’s population but make up approximately 25% of our pretrial jail population. During Coronavirus, owing to COVID-prompted reduction in the jail population, the pre-trial population that is Black has been hovering between 29%-31%.

Even as we have reduced our jail population more broadly as part of our prolonged work with the Safety and Justice Challenge, we have struggled to make progress on the racial disparities in our jail population. The Racial Equity Workgroup was founded to work specifically on reducing those racial disparities and determine methods and policy changes that can achieve that goal.

Workgroup members view the group as a place where they can deal with uncomfortable issues and speak without judgment. By showing up in the first place, there’s a commitment to racial equity. We start from there. Broad representation from around the community means we’re able to take a community-wide approach.

As we work on the justice system, we have to look more deeply into our society as a whole while keeping the big picture in mind.

Our Community Engagement Workgroup, for example, surveyed residents of public housing as part of its community outreach, and found that their priority concerns were: systemic poverty, a lack of jobs and resources, outsiders bringing in and using drugs, peer pressure, a lack of understanding of the justice system, the school to prison pipeline, as well as police attitudes towards their community.

Data also helps us to get beyond surface level conversations and has built momentum in our jurisdiction to achieve our goals. Having the data available without pointing to a specific person who’s responsible has helped us to delve into some tough but necessary conversations.

Luckily, our group has met for long enough now that we can have conversations respectfully on these issues and bring the conversation back to the data each time.

Right now, one of the things that we’re looking into is the disparity in the length of stay for violent crimes. We are trying to understand when we compare Black people and white people with similar charges and backgrounds, why is the length of stay longer for Black people? We raise the question: if people of color are often charged earlier in life and more aggressively, is that leading to longer sentences or longer periods in custody because they may have a longer record? Conducting case reviews, this has not always been the case. So we ask ourselves, why? We are trying to find the root causes so that we can ultimately tell our court system and local law enforcement agencies: “This is the policy change we need to make for racial equity in our community.”

We’re looking at the court system as whole, asking things like are we having bond hearings as frequently for Black clients as we are for white clients. As a public defender, I’m asking myself “Am I negotiating as hard as I would for my Black client as I would for my white client? Am I raising these issues in my discussion with court actors?”

We’re all doing that work. It can be mentally exhausting for people of color to lead, particularly on top of our full-time jobs. But the working group all show up with an incentive to change things. And we know we have the power to strengthen our community.

—Yolanda Fair is a public defender and chair of the Buncombe County Criminal Justice Equity Workgroup.

Taking stock of the open-source podcast 70 Million and its impact as season two launches

70 million adults in the United States have a criminal record. That’s one in every 3.5.

Although I’m not among them, these 70 million have become a significant part of my life thanks to our “70 Million” podcast, for which I am the creator and executive producer. I wrote about the launch of season one for the Vera Institute of Justice last year, and was humbled by the opportunity to work with some of the most talented audio producers in the country, as they reported on entrenched contradictions that make meaningful justice reform seem impossible. This included:

• A rigged bail system;
• The criminalization of poverty;
• Defendant-funded courts;
• Counties incentivized to incarcerate;
• Nonexistent mental health services;
• For-profit corrections companies;
• The warehousing of immigrants;
• Foster-care-to-prison pipelines; and
• The rise in women behind bars.

These are among the alarming trends that 70 Million chronicled in its award-winning first season. With season two, which premieres July 15, we’re taking the investigation a step further by bringing a sustained focus to how lives and communities are maligned by an ineffective, expensive, and at times corrupt network of judicial systems.

We made 70 Million because most people who have never been personally impacted by a brush with the law have a naive, almost fictionalized, understanding of the dragnet effect of the legal networks at work in the U.S., most of which function to criminalize poverty. Luckily, this is the best time to produce 70 Million because there’s a growing national awareness about the need to undo the decades of damage caused by misguided policies, intentionally harmful laws, and racialized social and economic exploitation of generations of Americans.

Our open-source digital approach has proven effective, as the first season of 70 Million was a success critically and commercially. At the time of this writing, we’re past the 35,000 download mark, wit each episode surpassing industry averages for similar podcasts in terms of unique listens, impressions, and listen-through rates. 70 Million has also been recognized for its quality, depth and narrative strengths by multiple industry authorities. Most recently, we received Bronze in the Narrative/ Documentary Podcast category at the New York Festival Radio Awards, a category that included ESPN Films, Vox Media, and Panoply.

What’s more, the response from people in the justice reform field has been effusive, with professors and researchers enthusiastically endorsing and recommending the podcast. We even learning that professors at LSU, Harvard, and Vanderbilt universities have included the podcast in courses.

By gathering deeply reported stories of successful reform-oriented programs, season two of 70 Million will hopefully offer tangible examples that can be replicated, as well as provide important lessons on potential roadblocks.

We learned so much from our first season. We learned that there’s a demand for coverage of stories that focus on actionable ideas for local criminal justice reform. We learned that digital audio is an ideal medium for disseminating these necessary stories. Every smart phone comes preloaded with a podcast app, so accessing 70 Million only requires clicking on an app on your phone. That has made it easy to spread the word and gain listeners, even as a highly focused podcast.

Our format also makes it really easy to share episodes via email, social media, even texts. And that has been a great advantage in a field where personal and peer recommendations are still the leading way people find new shows to listen to. In season two, we expect to have more evidence of these two factors, as our podcast further penetrates into academia, activist circles, and even public policy spheres.

Season one had listeners in 33 countries; and we received nearly 1,000 listens by currently incarcerated people using the Edovo app. Most importantly, our episode listen-through rate falls between 77-81 percent, which is higher than the 60 percent average for podcasting in general.

So the message is clear: people want solutions-oriented story-driven examples of criminal justice reform.

I cannot leave without introducing the tremendous group of people who make up the season two team: Jen Chien, Luis M. Gil, Casey Miner, Mitzi Miller, Kate Krosschell, Adizah Eghan, Cher Vincent, Nissa Rhee, Kenia D. Serrette, Sarah MacClure, Emma Forbes, Eve Abrams, Cheryl Green, Pamela Kirkland, Laine Kaplan-Levenson, Rowan Moore Gerety, Carolina Hidalgo, Jenny Casas, and Sabine Jansen.

If you’d like to learn more about 70 Million and get involved in reforms yourself, we’re proud to offer syllabi, resources, toolkits, and more on our site, 70millionpod.com. We’d love to hear from you: hello@lantiguawilliams.com or @LanWilCo. 70 Million is made possible by a grant from the Safety and Justice Challenge at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which also supports the Vera Institute of Justice.