Topic: Community Engagement

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The County has seen significant reductions in the local jail population due to swift action from policymakers to reduce the spread of COVID-19 among adults in custody, as well as a continued interest in sustaining policies to maintain a low jail population. Additionally, local policymakers are committed to moving toward a risk-based pretrial system, which will increase the number of individuals released pretrial and further the County’s goals of reducing its reliance on jail. Since the beginning of the county’s participation in the Safety and Justice Challenge, there has been a significant reduction in the jail population while keeping the community safe.

Also, in recognition of the immense collateral consequences and economic disadvantage people on supervision already face, Multnomah County eliminated parole and probation fees within the County’s Department of Community Justice. Supervision fees place incredible financial pressure on individuals who are exiting the criminal justice system, a disproportionate number of whom come from Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color. The move includes elimination of community service fees, urinalysis fees, and any other administrative fee collected from people involved in the justice system.

Remaining Challenges

Multnomah County is committed to addressing its remaining challenges to ensure the local justice system is fair, just, and equitable for all.

In an effort to launch a broad systemic conversation about inequities embedded in the criminal legal system, the Local Public Safety Coordinating Council’s (LPSCC) January 2020 What Works conference highlighted the need to redefine the jurisdiction’s entire approach to criminal justice and intentionally put equity at the center. In response, LPSCC launched a multi-year Transforming Justice process to develop, align and implement strategies for system change by engaging criminal system leaders, health/housing system leaders, elected officials, service providers, victims of crime, community members, and individuals with lived experience to ask hard questions and, together, reimagine the future of justice policy. An inclusive steering committee of people with diverse backgrounds and professions was formed in May 2021 to direct this work, under the guidance of outside facilitators identified through a competitive procurement process.

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on every aspect of the County’s local justice system and continues to uniquely affect those incarcerated in jails. The foundation of collaborative, data-driven strategies — including the necessary structures and collaboration from local stakeholders that are in place to support these strategies — set the County up to respond to the pandemic swiftly and effectively.

Action from policymakers to reduce the spread of COVID-19 among adults in custody led to significant reductions in the local jail population and, moving forward, a continued interest in sustaining the policies to maintain a low population. Further, the challenges of the pandemic, paired with local and national calls for racial justice and reckoning, are powerful motivators to substantially change the way the local criminal justice system functions.

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Strategies including the launch of the Initial Appearance Program have proved successful. Between April 2019 and early 2021, over 900 individuals have been supported with legal representation. Before the program, 53% of individuals were held on no bond or a cash-only bond at initial appearance. When people came to the initial appearance with legal representation, 78% of individuals had a reduction in bond or negotiated a release on recognizance, without paying bail.

As a result of the expedited probation program, the average length of stay for individuals decreased from 99 days to just 12 days during the period of 2017 to 2019. Because of the success of the program, the Missouri Probation and Parole department now fully funds the program and has hired staff to work at the county jail to fully institutionalize it.

Each of the county’s strategies is meant to decrease the disproportionate burden that people of color face in the criminal justice system. St. Louis County is also advised by the Ethnic and Racial Disparities committee, made up of criminal justice stakeholders, representatives from community advocacy groups, and individuals with lived experiences. As a result, the county is also seeing a sustained decline in racial and ethnic inequities in its justice system. As of Fall 2020, the population of Black people detained in jail has declined 37% during the Safety and Justice Challenge grant period, compared with 31% among white people. Length of stay has also declined, with Black individuals experiencing a 44% decline in the length of stay compared with 41% for white individuals.

The Population Review Team (PRT) has been meeting regularly since June 2018 to identify people who do not need to be in jail and can be safely released pretrial. As a result of the work of the PRT, there has since been a substantial decline in the Average Daily Population of people in the jail. Overall, the PRT has become a laboratory for innovation with committed stakeholders at the table who are committed to advancing the goals of SJC and beyond.

The newest St. Louis County initiative, the Tap In Center, has proved especially popular. For example, one individual visited the Tap In Center in January 2021 to get a public defender and a new court date. She said, “I am just very pleased with this program, I’ve felt stuck all my life with these warrants. To know that this program is available to help people, it’s a real reliever! Now that I don’t have a warrant I am about to be getting a job thanks to the Tap In Center!”

Remaining Challenges

St. Louis County is focused on addressing its remaining challenges in its local justice system.

While progress has been made in reducing racial and ethnic disparities, there is still work to be done in advancing equity in St. Louis County’s jails. The county will continue to work with the local community to develop initiatives that are responsive to the need for reform and assess any possible negative outcomes that could happen as a result.

St. Louis County has also developed a comprehensive plan for additional strategies and initiatives to invest in a safer, more effective, and more equitable system. The county will work with community service providers to expand access to mental health and substance abuse treatment, expand warrant resolution efforts, and continue to build the technological infrastructure and data capacity needed to sustain this work.

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on local justice systems and continues to uniquely affect those incarcerated in local jails. The foundation of collaborative, data-driven strategies, including the necessary structures and collaboration from local stakeholders that are in place to support these strategies, has set the county up well to respond to the pandemic swiftly and effectively.

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Since joining the Safety and Justice Challenge, the jail population in Palm Beach County has been significantly reduced while keeping the community safe.

The county’s PalmFUSE program has demonstrated that housing frequent utilizers and providing them with wraparound services creates stability and ensures that people with behavioral health issues do not cycle in and out of jail. Launched as a pilot, the initial PalmFUSE project provided housing and case management for 12 unhoused individuals with behavioral health issues who were frequently arrested and cycled in and out of jail. Before the program, the 12 participants had been arrested 64 times collectively in the two years before they were housed. The pilot was completed in 2020. All participants have remained in housing, and no one has been rearrested since joining the program. A new contract has been signed to expand the program to 25 participants in 2021.

The county’s text message court date reminder system has successfully reduced the number of warrants issued for failure to appear by 62% for Public Defender clients, as of December 2020.

Initial Case Conference (ICC) hearings are designed to decrease the average length of stay for incarcerated individuals charged with second- and third-degree felonies. COVID-19 has unfortunately affected the program by increasing length of stay. Further research is being conducted to measure the program’s impact as court schedules return to normal.

There is productive collaboration among key stakeholders, including judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, public defenders, and community members, which has contributed to the progress to achieve a more fair and equitable use of jails.

Remaining Challenges

Palm Beach County is focused on addressing its remaining challenges in its local justice system.

The major challenge the county faces is significantly reducing racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. The county is doubling down on the work to address disparities moving forward.

A second challenge is to examine changes the county has made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to determine if they are effective and should be continued after the pandemic has subsided. These changes include amending the administrative bond schedule and scheduling bond hearings more quickly.

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By implementing pretrial strategies, Pennington County has reduced the number of bookings for non-violent, low-level offenses by 76% between January 2018 and January 2021. Racial and ethnic disparities in the jail population have decreased as well. During that same timeframe, Pennington County saw a 22% reduction in Native Americans referred to the jail.

Between the first meeting in March 2018 through January 2021, the Jail Population Review Team has been able to look more closely at 1,225 individuals to determine if they would be able to be safely released from jail. As a result, 25% of people in jail were both recommended and approved for release, meaning that people spent over 5,196 days at home with their families, instead of in jail.

The Court Notifications program has delivered 66,770 reminders to people awaiting their court hearings between January 2019 and January 2021. Although the data is not yet available to directly connect the messages with court appearance, participant responses show that the reminders are extremely helpful, not only helping people remember court dates but also answering their questions and helping them find services.

Since its launch in August 2018, 425 people have been referred to the Community Work Program as an alternative to jail. Instead of remaining in the jail and away from their families and communities, they completed more than 7,000 hours of community service.

The Care Campus and Safe Solutions program made significant progress in keeping people struggling with substance use from entering or going further into the justice system. Since its opening in September 2018, the Care Campus has had 54,563 admissions of people with substance use disorders. Of these, 70% were admissions into Safe Solutions.

Beyond the statistics, these and other programs supported by the Safety and Justice Challenge have touched the lives of people in Pennington County. For example, a 28-year-old single mother contacted the 1-800 warrant resolution number—one of the strategies the county is advancing as part of local justice reform. She shared that she had two non-violent, low-level warrants. She had been offered a job within her community as a case worker but could not be officially offered the job with her active warrants. After being easily connected to the Safety and Justice Challenge Attorney Liaison, she provided the required documents, her warrants were cleared, her cases were dismissed, and she was able to accept the job.

Remaining Challenges

Pennington County continues to experience a high number of people awaiting trial within the jail. In order to respond, the Pretrial Monitoring Program began as a pilot in 2020. Program staff helps individuals waiting for case disposition to make sure they attend their next hearing without further contact with law enforcement. The county is seeking ways to grow more opportunities to release people before their trial begins.

Pennington County also continues to work to address racial and ethnic disparities in their local justice system, particularly the over-representation of Native Americans in the jail. The county continues to conduct tribal outreach and engagement on reservations and with Pennington County communities with the goal of reducing the over-representation of Native Americans in the jail system. While relationships with tribal communities have improved, there is still progress to be made.

Last, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on every aspect of the county’s local justice system. The foundation of collaborative, data-driven strategies, including the necessary structures and collaboration from local stakeholders that are in place to support these strategies, has set the county up well to respond to the pandemic effectively.

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By 2020, jail use in Charleston County was returning to its intended purpose, reducing the harms of unnecessary incarceration on people, families, and communities. This included a reduction in the jail population, local bookings, individuals booked, and charges.

The centralized database, launched in 2017, and now provides access from across the criminal justice system to see results, conduct analysis, and evaluate how the local criminal justice system is functioning and allows for identification of areas with the opportunity for improvement. This reporting shows that the municipal and magistrate charges brought to the jail declined by 78% from 2014 – 2020.

Five single-charge bookings, including simple possession of marijuana, open container, misdemeanor shoplifting, trespassing, and public intoxication, were specifically targeted as part of the county’s Safety and Justice Challenge efforts, and as a result, were reduced by 84% from 2014 – 2020. The number of people regularly cycling through the jail who were booked and released between 2014 – 2020 decreased by 63%.

The county made significant progress in diverting people from jail to alternatives to help get the help they need. In 2019, law enforcement referred 74 individuals to the Tri-County Crisis Stabilization Center, conducted 473 law enforcement consultations with embedded clinicians, and executed 152 law enforcement drop-offs to the Charleston Dorchester Mental Health Center.

Bond court representations by public defender attorneys started in 2016, gradually increasing from zero in 2015, to 2,128 in 2020. Bond court judges also became involved as partners, getting more information on setting bonds that are fair, just, and meaningful. As part of this, Pretrial Service Reports were set up in 2018 to better inform bond setting judges. These reports offered a consistent, objective, and reliable way to assess for risk of rearrests and/or missing court. By 2020, the reports became available to over 90% of bond hearings in the Centralized Bond Court.

The average number of days in the early stages of case processing improved from 2015 to 2020. This included improvements in the time it took to be assigned a public defender, assigned a solicitor, and how long it took for initial evidence from law enforcement to be provided to prosecutors.

While analyzing the relative rates of incarceration between racial and ethnic groups helped the county improve inequities in the criminal justice system, there is still more work to do. Disproportionately, Black people were booked into the local jail on low-level target charges as well as overall charges, although the gap had shrunk between 2014 and 2017.

The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) efforts to engage the community in the development of the strategic plan brought together over 1,200 community members, including many with direct experience of the justice system. Together, community members and system stakeholders (i.e., judges, public defenders, prosecutors, etc.) created the CJCC’s strategic plan in 2020, focusing on identifying data trends and community priorities to advance change for the next three years (FY2021 – FY2023).

Remaining Challenges

Charleston County is focused on addressing its remaining challenges in its local justice system.

The county’s current strategic plan aims to do more to help protect public safety, minimize harm, and more efficiently use limited system resources—all to create an effective, just, and equitable local criminal justice system.

The strategic plan includes a focus on community engagement, to keep people involved and provide more ways to engage in improving its criminal justice system. It also includes a planned update on the data around racial and ethnic disproportionality and disparities. Beyond data, a race equity fellowship proposal is in the works to create effective agents of change in building consciousness and reducing disparities among criminal justice system actors and people who are leading efforts to address racial and ethnic inequities throughout the community.

Regular reviews of the local jail population continue to be necessary, helping make sure that people who are not a threat to public safety or a flight risk are not detained pretrial unnecessarily. Continued General Sessions court reminders continue to remind defendants of their upcoming court events to increase court appearances and help make sure that the system doesn’t lose contact with people while their cases are pending.

The county must also continue to work on options for diverting and deflecting people from jail. This will include inter-agency case conferencing with service providers, law enforcement, and judicial stakeholders to improve outcomes for those who are most frequently booked into the local jail in an effort to break the cycle of repeated jail use; research on how diversion and deflection from the criminal justice system and into diversionary options impacts arrests, jail population, and behavioral health outcomes; and stronger county-wide tracking on crime and jail use.

The county will also continue to focus on bond hearings in Centralized Bond Court are fair, just, and meaningful. Regardless of the type of bond set, within the state there is currently minimal oversight of the conditions of the bond setting, let alone feedback about pretrial outcomes or a continuum of pretrial options available to help maximize safety and improve the rate of appearances. The strategic plan includes developing a proposal to help address these challenges.

The CJCC, in partnership with Trident United Way 211, is working to strengthen the directory of services for justice-involved people that will help ensure they know which services are available and who they can help.

Last, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on every aspect of the county’s local justice system and continues to uniquely affect those incarcerated in jail. More research is needed on the impacts of the pandemic on the justice system, and what lessons can be learned in the long-term.