Topic: Community Engagement

Members of the Safety and Justice Challenge grappled with questions about how mass incarceration is linked to Black history at a recent fireside chat during the annual convening of SJC network members.

Bria L. Gillum, Senior Program Officer, Criminal Justice with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation hosted the conversation with Kelly Lytle Hernandez, a professor of History and African American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. She is also a member of the SJC Advisory Council and a MacArthur Fellow.

Bria asked Kelly how she uses her journey as a historian and professor to think about mass incarceration. Kelly began by acknowledging that the land she was dialing in from in Los Angeles was historically colonized. She talked about the Tongva Basin in Los Angeles, home to the Chumash and Gabrielino peoples. Mass incarceration, Kelly said, is “the current chapter in a long book of inequity here in the United States and in the colonies that predated it.”

Academics like Angela Davis have also shown how mass incarceration emerged out of Jim Crow, which arose from enslavement, Kelly said. She recommended Imani Perry’s South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation. The book “helps us to understand how so much of our contemporary life, our institutions, our families, our culture is really anchored in the experience of Black enslavement,” she said. The United States was created through a particular form of colonization—the transfer of a European population to the North American continent, Kelly said. The intention was to “remove, erase, and replace the Indigenous population,” Kelly said. Scholars call it “native elimination.” Mass incarceration can be seen in that arc of elimination in   U.S history, Kelly said. It is about “removing unwanted populations” from the “white settler society.”

Bria asked Kelly how current conversations about criminal justice policy fit into that lens. For example, there are conversations happening today about reverting to policies from the 1980s and 1990s, like bringing back cash bail or arresting people for crimes of poverty. Bria asked: “What lessons can history teach us about criminal justice reform, and how can we use the history of this country to impact change?”

Kelly said that white supremacy is resilient and adaptable, cautioning against supposed reform efforts if they end up harming colonized and marginalized groups. For example, Kelly referenced Indian Boarding Schools as a so-called reform effort against genocide. She referenced Jim Crow laws as supposed reform efforts against the white backlash against Black emancipation from slavery. We need to monitor the outcomes of reform efforts across time to see if historically marginalized communities are not harmed, Kelly said.

Bria also asked Kelly to reflect on what era the United States is in, now, in 2022. We are transitioning out of an era of mass incarceration, Kelly said. But what comes next is still being defined. We need to listen to the voices and leadership of Black and Indigenous communities “to ensure we have the capacity to build a new society rather than a new regime,” Kelly said. She also called this a “very dangerous moment.”

Kelly spoke about using data to inform those conversations.

“One of the things that we noticed here in Los Angeles – and I’m sure you all were noticing this in other localities across the country – is that data was being used against our communities. We were being told that we always needed a bigger jail or more jails to keep us safe,” she said.

Instead, at UCLA, Kelly worked with community-based organizations in Los Angeles to acquire arrest and jail data. She worked together with those communities to clean up the data, categorize it, give it definitions, and analyze it. Together, they founded the Million Dollar Hoods project, which maps the cost of mass incarceration, documenting that local authorities are spending more than a million dollars annually to incarcerate people in some neighborhoods. The leading charges and causes of arrest in those neighborhoods were narcotics possession and driving under the influence, according to the data. “Both are substance related issues and the community wanted to see a community health response – not incarceration — to those substance related issues,” Kelly said.

The project has also sued the Los Angeles Police Department for data, including 200 boxes of records from the 1980s and 1990s. “We can use these records to document happened during the era of mass incarceration, and how the rise of policing and incarceration extracted much-needed resources from Black communities” Kelly said. Million Dollar Hoods is also collecting oral histories with residents. It’s important to collect people’s stories, Kelly said, to assess the past, understand the present, and imagine a new way forward. “Today, at the end of the age of mass incarceration, we refuse to have our stories overlooked, hidden, or ignored. We are saving our stories, on our terms, to assert a voice in the future to come.”

Bria closed the conversation by asking Kelly to reflect on the work of the Safety and Justice Challenge. The SJC is a diverse network including public defenders, prosecutors, policymakers, city and county leaders, and judges, Bria said. We are entering the third year of a pandemic, and we are continuing to deal with the death of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color people by law enforcement. Bria asked Kelly: “Do you have any recommendations about what we can collectively do to move forward on our criminal justice reform efforts? Taking history as our example, what should we be grappling with?”

Kelly encouraged SJC members to read history, especially to understand the history of criminalization, policing, and incarceration. It documents the many turning points and is a way of opening up the collective imagination about what is next, she said.

Kelly also recommended another book, called Covered with Night—A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace. It is a story about the murder of an Indigenous man by a White colonist. The White colonists were eager to be seen as doing justice and proposed killing the White murderer. But Indigenous people halted the process to avoid “greater harm and greater damage.” Instead, they demanded that the murderer pay emotional and financial reparations and that the neighboring white and Indigenous communities use the crisis to build stronger bonds.

“I encourage people to look at that book for an early alternative to punishment,” Kelly said. “I know everyone’s so busy, but maybe on weekends, pick up a chapter here and there to find the alternative histories that ground our radical perspectives and possibilities for what’s to come.”

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but the commitment of the Safety and Justice Challenge to improving racial equity in the jail system runs year-round.

With that in mind, here are a dozen blogs on racial justice written by members of the effort and featured over the last year.

1. Exploring the Difference Between Racial Equality and Racial Equity. Christopher James with the Haywood Burns Institute defined the terms of the debate: “To start treating, say, the Black community ‘the same as everyone else’ at this point in history will not go far enough in terms of achieving true equality,” he wrote.
2. The Catalyzing Impact of George Floyd’s Death on Criminal Justice Reform. A year after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, we asked how community leaders, organizers and activists have continued to champion criminal justice reform and call for an end to police violence.
3. Here’s Why Jails Need Better Emergency Planning. Ronald Simpson Bey from Just Leadership USA reflected on the racial disparities in the jail system, and how they have impacted Black and Brown people, particularly through COVID. “We show that Black and Brown people are disposable in the United States when we fail to plan for emergencies,” he wrote.
4. How Prisons and Jails Might Function if Addressing Trauma Was a First Priority. Nneka Jones Tapia with the Square One Project focused on healing the trauma of over-policing in Black and Brown communities, a topic rooted in the experience of seeing her father arrested for marijuana possession when she was growing up as a child in North Carolina. “As a child, you never forget the experience of police officers hauling your father off,” she wrote. “You do not forget having to interact with your father through a piece of glass. They are links in the chain of trauma that lie embedded within a person. And it radiates through communities.”
5. Failing to Track Ethnicity Accurately. Troublingly, many jails across the United States are still failing to adequately track race and ethnicity, particularly of Latino people, says Nancy Rodriguez, a Professor at the University of California, Irvine.
6. Overrepresentation of Indigenous People in Jails. We also spoke with Indigenous people about their experience with the jail system. “Systemic biases in America’s government and legal systems are rooted in historic genocide perpetrated against Native people,” said Dr. Selso Villegas. “We’re invisible to people because that’s the way many in society want it,” he said.
7. Meaningfully Engaging People with Lived Experience. Aminah Elster is an SJC Fellow and Campaign and Policy Coordinator at the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. She wrote a piece about efforts by the District Attorney’s office in San Francisco to meaningfully incorporate people with direct experience of the criminal justice system in the office’s decision-making. She wrote, “efforts by criminal legal system leaders to engage community members with lived experiences of incarceration are often brief, centered on one-way, top-down information exchange or focused on asking for general input.”
8. Pathways to Collective Healing: Law Enforcement and the Communities They Serve. Aviva Kurash with the International Association of Chiefs of Police wrote about a four-year Collective Healing initiative led by the association to focus on how police agencies can build and maintain trust and legitimacy with the communities they serve.
9. Asking Ourselves: “Who’s Not Here in the Room?” Gwen Whiting is Director of Training and Leadership Development at Everyday Democracy. She’s worked with several cities and counties participating in SJC to embed racial equity, often through better community engagement. In this piece, she shares a key lesson for those across the country looking to do the same.
10. Local Communities Are Better Placed Than Governments to Determine Public Safety. Renita Francois with the City of New York focused on community-centered design principles. She wrote about the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety and its work in Brownsville, Brooklyn, home to the most densely concentrated area of public housing in the United States. Its work included offering a community poetry night called Poetic Justice, a roller-skating event called Swervin; an employment expo for residents; and a performance of “King Lear” followed by an interactive, guided conversation about caregiving and death.
11. From the Barbershop to the Bakery, What Makes You Feel Safe? Emily Rhodes, a member of the Community Advisory Group in New Orleans, focused on community art projects designed to get residents discussing what they understand as public safety.
12. A Twitter Chat on Reducing Racial Disparities. Marshall Project Staff Writer Jamiles Lartey hosted a Twitter chat on strategies for addressing racial equity in our criminal justice system as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge’s commemoration of Black History Month. From ending cash bail to empowering impacted communities in criminal justice reform, to replacing police with community response models for crimes better handled without a law enforcement response, the conversation emphasized ways to hold the system more accountable for racial disparities.

A new research paper from the Square One Project at Columbia University offers the first comprehensive review of experimental social policy interventions that can end mass incarceration. The review demonstrates that greater investments in healthcare, education, employment, housing and social services – as well as increased scientific rigor in implementation – are needed to effectively decarcerate.

My colleagues Emily Wang, Laura Hawks, Lisa Puglisi, and I reviewed more than 23,000 research articles to produce the paper, “Towards A New Framework for Achieving Decarceration: A Review of the Research Literature on Social Investments.” We sought to answer the question: Which interventions into social policy (investments in housing, healthcare, employment, education, and social support programs) through community-led organizations have been shown to reduce incident incarceration or recidivism? The lack of research was stark: only 53 total papers fit our research protocol and were included in our findings.

Three intervention types had the most consistent and largest reductions in criminal legal system interaction:

1. Early childhood education programs, particularly those that support parents

Some of the most effective early childhood interventions happen before a child is even born. Effective nurse-family partnerships help families stay healthy during pregnancy. Once the baby arrives, these nurses can help monitor important signifiers of good health and teach new mothers best practices in post-partum healthcare for both mother and child. Research indicates improved life outcomes, including decreased interaction with the criminal legal system, for both the mother and the child immediately following the intervention and decades later.

Likewise, the average layperson might not think great preschool programs are significant, but the research suggests that their impact is huge. The cognitive malleability of a preschool-aged child suggests that active stimulation and meaningful educational experiences at this age can improve well-being down the line, and research has proven this true. The research literature demonstrates that the most effective preschool programs are those that have structured, individualized curricula and provide “wraparound services,” or a direct line of communication between teachers and parents or guardians. This can be as simple as a teacher being able to ask a parent, “I’ve noticed that Sam seemed tired today and wasn’t as engaged with his friends as a consequence. Have you noticed a change of sleeping habits?” Parents and teachers can then work together to make sure the child’s full needs are met, in and out of the classroom. While interactions like these seem small or intangible, they are strong contributors to improving tangible measures of well-being.

2. Community-based job placement specialists that help individuals re-entering society find stable, gainful employment

The research shows that it is not enough to give people just any kind of job as they are transitioning from justice system involvement and back into society. It turns out that gainful employment – jobs that are skilled, long-term, provide benefits like healthcare or retirement funds, and offer opportunities for promotion or managerial experience– is the only thing that really reduces criminal legal system interaction. Temporary, non-skilled work at low wages does not help in any significant way.

The most effective transitional employment programs for people reentering society from carceral settings are those that offer case management; in these situations, a case worker will partner with the reentering person to strategize, create resumes, practice interviewing, and even call potential employers to vouch for their suitability. Active collaboration between the reentering person and their case worker empowers people who are reentering to pursue jobs that feel meaningful and well-suited to their interests, skills, and lifestyle.

Likewise, there is heavy emphasis during reentry programming on obtainment of a high school diploma or certificate of General Educational Development (GED). But these do not significantly reduce recidivism – they do not provide many opportunities for meaningful employment. We found that existing research shows that people need an Associate’s or Bachelor’s-level degree to effectively overcome the stigmas they experience on reentering civilian life.

3. Social services care coordination and Multisystemic Therapy

Multisystemic therapy (MST) has been studied in multiple samples of justice-involved youth people, with significant reductions in criminal legal system involvement demonstrated. During MST, young people participate in group or individualized therapy accompanied by psychosomatic medication if needed – essentially traditional cognitive behavioral therapy. In addition, their entire family is involved in their rehabilitation. This means extra sessions with a young person’s family, teachers, or other community members, or at least active communication between the parties and therapist. Because of this broader engagement, MST gives a fuller picture of a child’s socio-emotional context (e.g., “is this child acting out because of family hardship?”), and helps a therapist actively involve adults in the young person’s life in comprehensive care coordination.

What does this mean for the SJC Network?

People who are working to reduce jail populations – for example, as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge – are often siloed from people who make broader decisions about community-led investments in social supports. But our review of the research shows how efforts to reduce jail populations fit into a broader picture of how to effectively end mass incarceration. Reducing the number of people in jails and fortifying our social safety net are the twin pillars of decarceration. Cities and counties participating in SJC should continue actively engaging with community-led organizations providing social policy programming, as the work of SJC and its community counterparts is deeply connected.

Historically and up to today, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, and people residing in neighborhoods of historic divestment, are more likely to be harmed by public safety systems.

To truly reimagine public safety, cities must acknowledge these harms and take actionable steps, alongside their residents, toward transformation. In 2020 the names of people lost to police violence became synonymous with the movement toward justice. These tragic losses prompted a long overdue conversation with local leaders. They realized they could no longer treat public safety as solely a function of law enforcement.

The recent upticks in violent crime in many cities, despite low crime rates overall, reinforce the importance of city leaders having guidance and support as they think differently about public safety. Losing momentum toward transformation could lead cities back toward strictly enforcement and punishment-based levers for safety.

In this context, the National League of Cities Reimagining Public Safety Task Force held meetings and listening sessions hoping to collectively set a new vision for what it means to keep residents safe. Meeting from February to August of 2021, Mayors and Councilmembers from more than 20 cities, alongside national partners and community stakeholders, developed five high-level recommendations that support the movement toward safety for everyone.

Through collaboration with their peers, national organizations, and most importantly, their communities, elected officials can innovate and replicate policies and initiatives using these recommendations as a guide. Within each recommendation there is a strong focus on both moving away from policing as the only option and on centering the equitable engagement and involvement of residents in every step of the process.

Captured in the report “A Path Toward Safe & Equitable Cities”, the recommendations provide an initial framework for city action:

1. Direct municipal government leadership toward providing safety and well-being for all. This recommendation guides local leaders towards broader definitions of safety and new ways to measure what it is that makes people feel safe. A focus on wellbeing and public health leads cities toward expansive safety visions.
2. Balance the respective roles of government agencies, residents, and partners. Non-traditional stakeholders need to be involved in safety conversations, planning, and budgeting. Specifically, this inclusion centers members of the community who are often left out but most impacted by the harms of current systems.
3. Significantly expand the use of civilian-led and community-based well-being and prevention-focused strategies. Building on the momentum around community responder models and the amplification of credible messengers as key for any safety plan, this recommendation highlights public health response options to both crisis and violence.
4. Embrace full and transparent oversight and accountability for law enforcement. While the report does not center law enforcement in reimagining public safety, it is important for cities leaders to recognize and embrace their role in the oversight of their local police force. Accountability and transparency matter.
5. Seek guidance and support from peers and experts with the assistance of the National League of Cities. Local elected officials face scrutiny daily. In 2020, they also faced both a global pandemic and a reckoning around policing. Support from their peers and access to other resources is necessary as they take a journey toward community centered safety.

During NLC’s annual City Summit in November 2021, a Municipal Toolkit was released to dig deeper into what cities are doing and can do to bring these recommendations to life. The toolkit takes each recommendation and explains it in depth, draws out local examples where it has worked, and describes what implementing policies and initiatives could look like in communities across the country.

NLC, and the Task Force, recognizes that no city has this figured out completely and that much of what we have seen thus far has been smaller in scale and less equitable than we would like. However, by taking these steps, evaluating them, enhancing them and taking them to scale, transformation is possible. In addition, the American Rescue Plan offers an opportunity for cities to invest in ways not possible before. Not all cities are the same and not every city leader will act in the same way. But, through collaboration with residents, local stakeholders, and national partners, we can move from harm to wellness.

“We are talking about wellness. We are talking about holistic health in our communities. That is what public safety is all about—not just the absence of violence—but the presence of wellness,” said Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark, New Jersey. “We need more than the police department to create wellness. Public safety has to be expanded and put in the hands of other folks.”