Topic: Community Engagement

This month, mayors from 12 cities partnered with Center for American Progress to launch Mayors for Smart on Crime, a national initiative promoting fair, just and proportional, and comprehensive approaches to public safety and criminal justice that are driven by evidence and data. With support from the Safety and Justice Challenge, Mayors for Smart on Crime brings together a diverse group of leaders from cities of different sizes and regions, united by their commitment to building safer, fairer communities.

Mayors are uniquely positioned to effect positive change and give voice to the movement against outdated and ineffective “law and order” policies. Traditionally, the responsibility for enhancing public safety has been placed solely on the shoulders of police and other enforcement agencies. This led to an unnecessary growth of the number of people in our jails and prisons. Today, we understand that public safety is not limited only to the enforcement tool in the toolbox. It requires partnerships with members of the community, advocates, social service agencies, and public health entities, just to name a few. This results in both safe communities and an equitable and right-sized justice system.

Across the country, mayors are positioned to lead these multi-faceted approaches and bring comprehensive solutions to bear. In Dayton, Ohio, for example, Mayor Nan Whaley is leading the way to combat the impact of opioid addiction. Whaley was one of the first mayors in Ohio to declare a state of emergency in response to the opioid epidemic, a move that opened up additional resources to support the city’s response. “The declaration of emergency allowed us to do what we call harm reduction,” Whaley said. The city equipped all first responders with the overdose reversal drug Naloxone, and launched a needle-exchange program at three sites across the city. Through needle exchanges, individuals affected by addiction can swap used needles for clean ones, helping to curb the spread of diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis C.  Mayor Whaley also views the program as an opportunity to build connections with impacted communities.  “[The needle-exchange program is] an opportunity for us to open the door so we have a relationship—where if someone feels they have nowhere else to turn [then] they have this place,” she explained. “That way, when they’re ready for treatment, we can get them into treatment very quickly.”

Mayor Michael Hancock of Denver, Colorado is another vocal advocate for smart on crime approaches. His city has embodied these principles with recent sentencing reforms. Previously, all violations of city ordinances carried a maximum sentence of one year in jail, regardless of the severity of the offense. That meant petty infractions, such as public urination, were subject to the same punishment as assault, domestic violence, and other serious crimes. In May 2017, the Denver City Council unanimously approved a comprehensive overhaul of sentencing laws, which established proportional responses to city-level offenses. Under the new structure, the most serious crimes are still punishable by a maximum of 365 days in jail. But for minor violations, the maximum sentence has been reduced to 60 days. “With this ordinance, we will ensure punishment fits the severity of the offense,” Hancock said.

These reforms represent a major step towards protecting all of Denver’s residents, including immigrants, refugees, and those experiencing homelessness. Notably, federal law stipulates that ICE must be notified whenever an immigrant is convicted of a crime that carries a maximum sentence of one year or more, even if the individual receives a lesser sentence. Under the new sentencing structure, less serious offenses will no longer trigger ICE notification – and by preserving the 365-day maximum for violent crimes, the sentencing structure will continue to hold serious offenders accountable.  Mayor Hancock called the reforms a “critical step” towards keeping families intact and “ensuring low level offenses, like park curfew, are not a deportation tool.”

Mayors for Smart on Crime will give mayors the opportunity to share strategies and benefit from the collective knowledge of their peers. Reflecting on her experiences in Gary, Indiana, Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson emphasized the importance of comprehensive public safety approaches. “If we continue to use law enforcement-centered solutions, we will get the same mixed results,” she explained, “and we will continue to lose valuable human potential.”

Mayor Jim Kenney of Philadelphia reinforced this principle, explaining that incarceration “doesn’t solve the problem.” Instead, Kenney takes a holistic view of crime prevention efforts, focused on addressing the root causes of criminal involvement. “When you see wasted potential and wasted talent, and you recognize that if that person had a different experience in life, and a different educational experience and a different opportunity for work experience, that they would be contributing much more than they are now,” he says. “There are no such thing as throw away people. Everyone has a chance to redeem themselves.”

Learn more about Mayors for Smart on Crime and see full list of participating mayors.

Any indication our neighborhoods may be becoming less safe will always be met with anxiety. The FBI’s annual report on crime, released in September, will fairly be met with some concern that our collective effort to keep citizens safe is going in the wrong direction.

According to the FBI, the violent crime rate in the United States remains near half-century lows, but increased nationally between 2015 and 2016, a continuation of increases seen in last year’s report. While any increase in violent crime is cause for alarm, a detailed look at the data reveals that a large percentage of the increases are concentrated in certain neighborhoods around the country, reflecting local factors. Combatting these factors will require locally tailored crime prevention strategies supported by research.

As two leaders on the front lines of our respective state and city’s criminal justice systems, we’ve pursued strategies to hold the people who committed crimes accountable and witnessed first-hand the harm that these crimes can cause communities. We also know how vital it is to look beyond the headlines and peel back the layers of data that mask what’s really happening in each state and the communities within those states in order to determine effective solutions to ensure the people in those jurisdictions remain safe.

For instance, from 2014 to 2016, Kansas saw its violent crime rate increase by 9 percent. What that number doesn’t show is that the state also saw a 7-percent decline in rape. During the same period, Georgia’s statewide violent crime rate increased 5 percent, but that hides the fact that its most populous city, Atlanta, saw its violent crime rate actually drop by 12 percent.

Other locations across the country are experiencing very different trends. In some communities, homicide is up, pushing the overall homicide rate to increase by 8.6 percent. Other crime categories have reached historic lows. National property crime rates, for example, were last this low in 1966, and national violent crime rates have been lower than the current rate only five times since 1971.

It’s important to take a comprehensive look at all crime trends, specific subsets of crime categories, historical context, and geographic characteristics of local jurisdictions, such as urban and rural. Additionally, poverty rates, illegal drug use and other societal issues should be examined to help understand larger issues leading to crime.

The complexity of local crime trends means that no one number can guide our public safety strategies. States and communities should collaborate with community members and stakeholder organizations when reviewing data and deciding on how best to allocate resources and develop public safety improvement and crime prevention strategies. The good news is that states that are targeting that type of approach are already seeing results.

According to a recent brief from The Council of State Governments Justice Center, South Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and several other states have seen recidivism rates fall significantly, meaning fewer people are leaving prison and committing new crimes.

A growing number of cities and counties are embracing targeted solutions as well. Through the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge—to which CSG Justice Center is a strategic ally—forty jurisdictions are piloting data-driven solutions to reduce the cycle of incarceration that can destabilize individuals and communities and lead to more crime.

The FBI crime report should prompt a serious dialogue among state and local leaders about the differing challenges they face in combatting the pockets of persistent violence around the country. How can communities make a positive impact on violent crime trends while maintaining the progress being made on property crime in an era of tightening budgets? How can they best address the significant impacts opioids and mental health issues are having on our criminal justice systems?

This type of deep data analysis at the local level is the only way to ensure unique challenges are met with appropriate solutions, especially when state and local trends can be at odds with one another, both state by state and community by community.

In that spirit, towns, counties, and cities must take the same initiative to closely examine indicators like arrest rates and the effectiveness of probation and parole programs to key aspects of the local system, such as addressing crime at the moment of impact all the way through someone’s eventual release from prison or jail, determining whether victims are receiving restitution, and understanding how courts are using detailed assessments to make appropriate decisions for each individual.

The new FBI crime numbers should represent the beginning of a locally driven conversation about data-driven solutions, not the end. Federal policymakers should stand with states and localities as they dig into their crime data to make sure that funding, programs and policies are focused on the public safety issues most relevant to their unique communities.

Michael Boggs is a Georgia Supreme Court Justice and Co-Chair of the Georgia Criminal Justice Reform Council. Gordon Ramsay is the Chief of the Wichita Police Department. They both serve on The Council of State Governments Justice Center Board of Directors. This post originally appeared on the CSG Justice Center website. 

As Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” It’s hard to imagine a better example of the need for new ways of thinking than in the difficult challenge of criminal-justice reform at the local level of government. Whether you’re driven by a passion for restorative justice, concerned about safety in your community, or looking for ways to get runaway costs under control, criminal-justice reform benefits everyone.

In Spokane, Wash., we’re dealing with the same criminal-justice issues that jurisdictions throughout the nation face. Our regional criminal-justice system is expensive, yet we’re collectively not getting the results we want: Our jail continues to be overcrowded, and recidivism rates are too high. System-level change is necessary, yet also very difficult. Our regional philosophy is to lead the necessary change instead of letting change lead us, and as regional government executives our collaborative leadership is crucial.

Recognizing that our local governments can no longer afford to continue performing services that are duplicative or fail to deliver desired outcomes, Spokane County and the city of Spokane have jointly committed to a regional partnership to find a better way. Our mission is to effectively change our predominantly offense-based, punishment-focused criminal-justice system into one that is offender-based and rehabilitation-focused.

As senior leaders, we like to stress the point, “You can’t face it if you can’t see it.” So we’re using a very structured, project-based approach to identify areas for improvement, taking the necessary time up front to clearly “see” each problem through facts and data. Further, we demand solutions from our project teams that will deliver better system outcomes without requiring more taxpayer money. A recent example: In the past year, we spent less than 50 percent of the original estimate on our new computer-aided dispatch/records management system for 911 services. That equated to millions of taxpayer dollars saved.

After defining and agreeing upon a specific system problem, we formally charter a project to address it that defines the sponsor, project manager, allocated budget, team members and stakeholders, objectives and deliverables, assumptions and risks, and timeline. Our Spokane Regional Law and Justice Council (SRLJC) approves these charters, provides overall governance and receives frequent updates on projects.

Aligning our vision to that of the Safety and Justice Challenge, a national, foundation-supported effort to reduce over-incarceration, has made all the difference in this effort. Our SRLJC has recently hired a regional criminal-justice administrator who has brought us a nationally recognized skillset and is effectively working with our key stakeholders, including community members, to implement our improvements. And thanks to our partnership with the Challenge, our pretrial services team has been expanded by six members and has recently implemented an innovative tool called the Spokane Assessment for Evaluation and Risk (SAFER) to reduce unnecessary incarcerations.

As a result, we’ve significantly expanded monitoring services across all three of our courts to safely supervise individuals in our community instead of housing them in jail. Last month we conducted 841 SAFER risk assessments, which recommended that we release and/or monitor 65 percent of these individuals. And we’ve reduced our average daily jail population by 6.7 percent over the past five months.

Of course, a key part of any reform effort like what we are undertaking is to make sure that taxpayer money is spent wisely and effectively. The county and the city share the burden of a $220-million-a-year criminal-justice system. If we can collectively be just 10 percent smarter, more efficient and more creative, we can reinvest $22 million annually to improve our criminal-justice system while also enhancing public safety. Cost savings generated from smarter ways of delivering higher-quality service, along with investments from non-government partners, will allow us to create new, evidence-based programming and support facilities, which will result in reduced recidivism and accelerated rehabilitation.

Just building an effective multi-jurisdictional, regional team to solve our criminal-justice challenges has proved to be a herculean effort in innovation. We’ve learned that it is impossible to touch one part of the criminal-justice system without impacting other parts. It’s only through the collaboration of our county and city forces that we’re able to make these commitments to new, dynamic investments in an environment in which each of our individual agencies is severely financially constrained.

We’ve already made impressive progress. But there is so much more to do, and many years of difficult decisions and actions lay ahead. With the foundation we’ve built around a shared vision, we believe that we will be able to lean into the effort together and build a far better criminal-justice system for our community.

This post was also published on Governing. 

As the project director of Charleston County’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC), I know firsthand the challenges counties face in improving their criminal justice systems and changing jail use. I also know the opportunities CJCCs present in building coalitions of government and community leaders to tackle these problems head-on. Thanks to our involvement in the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), Charleston’s CJCC is a success story—and an example—on building and maintaining momentum for reform.

In 2010, Charleston County completed the third expansion of the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center (SACDC) at a cost of $100 million. Many taxpayers barely blinked.

Prior to construction, the jail was originally rated for 661 people—yet it housed nearly 2,000. Severe overcrowding and unsafe conditions documented by local reporters were rampant, and construction of a new jail was imperative.  In 2010, the SACDC became the largest jail in South Carolina with a rated capacity of 1,917 and infrastructure built in to grow if needed.

While the new jail greatly improved conditions, many of the same underlying challenges that contributed to overcrowding in the first place remained—such as high rates of recidivism, lack of adequate information to accurately assess risk at bond hearings, high caseloads, and too few options other than jail. Business as usual resumed as the urgency of the overcrowding crisis went away.

When the Challenge launched in 2015, criminal justice leaders in Charleston came together to finally tackle these underlying issues head-on. To do this, learning from past experiences was essential. For example:

• Many good programs failed to survive after time-limited funding ran out. Sustainability of the effort had to be a focus from the start.
• Finding ways to mitigate our data challenges had to be a critical area of focus in order to study the systemic challenges and address issues driving jail use.
• Collaborations fade when the sense of urgency goes away. It was going to take an actively functioning, sustained group of leaders and staff from across the system working together and specifically dedicated to the effort in order to address pervasive and enduring system issues.

As a result, system leaders and community representatives in Charleston came together, structured, and activated a Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC). With support from the Challenge, we invested in one employee and in building a base for system-level data capacity. The CJCC used those resources and the technical assistance provided by the Challenge to critically assess the system, understand what was happening at key decision points, and find ways to address the underlying and pervasive systemic challenges that building a bigger jail could not solve.

Two years later, with a “whatever it takes” mindset, the CJCC’s journey continues to advance the importance of rethinking jail use and lowering disparate impact on communities of color and the poor.  Some essential highlights include the following:

• expanding CJCC membership to include a large and diverse group of system leaders and community members;
• establishing a defined vision, mission, guiding principles, and clearly chartered set of responsibilities;
• drawing on the collective expertise of system leaders and community members to find common ground in discussions of data findings and lived experiences, to determine priorities and focus strategies accordingly;
• building from the ground up six reform strategies, including a centralized database to pull together and analyze data from 12 different data systems for ongoing analysis and feedback, to guide implementation efforts toward desired outcomes; and
• growing a presence in the community through community partnerships, speaking engagements, print, social and news media, and commitment to transparency with open meetings and regular reporting.

Thanks to the Safety and Justice Challenge, in a state were CJCCs are not common, Charleston’s CJCC is thriving and actively implementing comprehensive reforms that rethink jail use and help to improve the local criminal justice system.  While we know we have our work cut out for us in the years to come, we remain grateful for the Challenge and excited about the possibilities.

When it comes to predictions—for example, the weather or national elections—experts are not always right. One safe bet, however, is when we try and predict who will continue to be arrested and booked into jail for minor criminal matters. In those cases, past behavior, uninterrupted by interventions, may well be the best predictor of future arrests.

In King County, Washington (Seattle), we have begun to predict who will be coming to our county jails based on the frequency of their past bookings. What we have learned has inspired us to consider a new approach. The King County Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) took a look at individuals who have been booked four or more times in any 12-month period over the past three years and found that at any given time, there are about 2,000 people in our jail system who meet this criteria.

County taxpayers spent about $35 million a year on this group—an average of about $28,000 for each of the frequent visitors to our jail. Of this money, 87% was spent on due processes—criminal justice or crisis response programs—which primarily deal with the negative results of behavioral health disorders. Only 13% was devoted to programs like housing, treatment, or health care that can prevent frequent utilization of jails and other emergency services.

The Familiar Faces Initiative was created collaboratively within King County agencies with the goal to proactively assist people with the highest risk of arrest and incarceration for minor crimes. “When you look at this challenge through a behavioral health lens there is a real opportunity to help people find stability in their lives to avoid the patterns of conduct that lead so regularly to jail,”  said Adrienne Quinn, Director of DCHS. “We know that there is a better use of County resources than repeatedly processing the same people through the court system for minor matters,” she said.

The first step has been to identify a small cohort of 60 people meeting the definition of a “Familiar Face.” Care managers are reaching out to these individuals before they come back to jail with an offer of services and support. The program is in its inception, so there is little data yet, but we are encouraged by individual stories of success—like the man who was homeless for 17 years and is now in supportive housing through the efforts of the Familiar Faces team.

There is even a role for a deputy prosecuting attorney in Familiar Faces, which is modeled after the prosecutor’s role in Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, an arrest diversion model that has been replicated nationally. The prosecutor monitors all Familiar Faces participants for any new criminal activity as well as any pre-existing legal entanglements, and provides information to the care team regarding outstanding warrants and pending cases. The deputy prosecuting attorney utilizes prosecutorial discretion to divert cases, or works closely with law enforcement, the intensive care management team, defense attorneys, and community members collaboratively to resolve participants’ criminal entanglements so that they can access treatment and other services.

This preventative approach depends on new partnerships between social service providers and the criminal justice system. We all share the same goals of increased public safety and improved health for those stuck in the downward spiral of the criminal justice system. Familiar Faces is one example of what I call “Community Justice”: doing justice together with the community, and defining accountability through an outcome that is focused on reducing the harm that people do to themselves and their neighborhood.

For more information about Familiar Faces, please contact Jesse Benet, King County Behavioral Health and Recovery Division, Diversion and Reentry Services, at jesse.benet@kingcounty.gov.