Topic: Data Analysis

Jails book and confine more than 10 million people every year in the United States. People incarcerated in jails can experience overcrowding, lack of resources, exposure to violence, and deteriorating physical and mental health.

In response to these harsh conditions and impacts on individuals, practitioners and policymakers have pushed to reduce the size of US jails. As part of this national movement to rethink jails, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation founded the Safety and Justice Challenge to provide support to local communities to tackle the misuse and overuse of jails. With financial and technical assistance support from MacArthur, over 50 cities and counties have implemented innovative strategies to reduce their local jail populations by releasing more individuals on pretrial release and reconsidering the use of jail for new bookings.

However, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020 forced cities and counties participating in SJC to reduce their jail populations even more to meet social distancing recommendations. Since COVID-19, data from SJC communities analyzed by the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governments (ISLG) consistently show that decreasing the jail population does not lead to violent crime. Additionally, across SJC cities and counties, most individuals released pretrial were not booked for a new crime, and it was even more rare for an individual to be re-booked for a violent offense. Combined, the data from SJC communities suggests reducing the size of the jails is not only possible but does not lead to a rise in crime broadly or a rise in violent crime, specifically.

This is especially true for Multnomah County, Oregon, which had remarkable declines in their jail population during COVID without a rise in violent crime. Capitalizing on existing SJC relationships, Multnomah County stakeholders implemented some new strategies but mostly relied on expanding the eligibility of existing SJC reforms to quickly reduce their jail population. At the same time, the county experienced decriminalization of drug use and 100 days of social unrest in protest of police brutality and systemic racism which created the destruction of several buildings and businesses. Combined, the decriminalization of drugs and protests increased the visibility of drug use, houselessness, and created a general sense of lawlessness across the county even though crime or violence did not increase. Now, four years after COVID-19 began and two years after of the passage of the decriminalization of drugs, Multnomah County residents are critical of criminal justice reform and pushing for standard criminal justice responses, like the reliance on jail.

A new research study produced by Justice System Partners delved into the experience and data in Multnomah County and made the following findings:

• The Value of the SCJ during COVID-19. Because Multnomah County was already working with SJC when COVID hit, staff had all the infrastructure in place to safely reduce their jail population. The county’s participation in SJC laid the groundwork and framework for stakeholders to meet and collaborate quickly. Although some new approaches were implemented, the county mostly expanded the eligibility of pretrial reforms they had previously implemented as part of SJC. These strategies include citation-in-lieu of arrest and booking; reducing jail admissions for community supervision violations; limiting warrants for recorded court absences; and expediting jail releases with manual review. Using various strategies, county stakeholders reduced the number of bookings throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and specifically experienced a steady decline in jail bookings across each of the subsequent four time periods.
• Reaffirming evidence on violent crime and using jails effectively. Reducing the reliance on jails did not lead to an escalation of jail bookings for violence broadly. Nor did it lead to an escalation of jail bookings for violence by individuals with a history of violent charges. The individual demographic composition of the jail remained relatively the same throughout the study period. However, the composition of the charges booked into jail changed significantly. Overall, the jail experienced a lower proportion of bookings for low-level and non-violent charges, demonstrating that during the two years following the start of the pandemic in March 2020, stakeholders relied on the jail for booking more serious charges. Bookings for violent charges did not increase during the pandemic, demonstrating that reducing bookings for low-level charges does not lead to an increase in violent charges. The composition of jail bookings shifted during the period of social unrest in the summer and fall of 2020, with a greater proportion of jail bookings associated with behavioral charges (such as disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and harassment, among others). The jail held fewer people overall and fewer numbers of individuals were booked with a violent offense. However, what was booked was more often for a violent offense. Therefore, the proportion of violence charges in the jail increased, but not necessarily the number of violent charges. This suggests the county began relying on jail predominately for violent offenses charges – a more effective use of its jail.

• Perceptions of safety extend beyond classic definitions of violence. During the study period, community and justice system staff members reported a decrease in perceptions of safety, largely from visibility of drug use and social disorder. Community stakeholders discussed their perceptions of safety differently than justice system staff, echoing earlier Safety and Justice Challenge research on the multifaceted concepts of “safety.” This suggests system staff stakeholders should aim to “frame conversations around community safety instead of public safety.” Perception of public safety is less about classic definitions of violence and more about the discomfort with physical and social disorder. Community members often discussed perception of seeing or experiencing more “violence” during COVID-19, but actually described physical and social disorder including property damage and drug use. In the summer of 2020, community members protested police brutality and the role of the justice system in communities following the murder of George Floyd. Interviews with community members indicate that there is a need for conversations about the term violence, including which individuals and what charges should be characterized as violent. As a field, we must grapple with how people who commit violence and systems that are violent may be interconnected.

• Staff wellness matters for sustainability of reform. COVID-19 brought an emphasis and renewed interest in physical and emotional well-being and health. As we work to heal communities impacted by the justice system, we must also consider the impacts of the system on staff, too. Staff experienced significant workplace trauma from social unrest and still showed compassion for the need to reduce reliance on jails. Staff who experienced harms are still healing yet responsible for sustaining the work. There are significant challenges with tasking the people who experienced workplace trauma to champion reforms without acknowledgment or space for healing.

The experiences and data from Multnomah County during this period serve as valuable guiding principles for other communities looking to navigate the complex terrain of justice reform with equity, efficiency, and humanity.

Since 2015, we’ve worked with the Safety and Justice Challenge in communities across the country to develop, implement, and study tailored strategies to safely reduce jail populations. Now, we’re embarking on a new effort to synthesize that research into the next generation of reform priorities—and better understand how to effectively reduce racial and ethnic disparities.

The Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, has been commissioning research in communities to answer the question of “what works?” in criminal legal reform across the nation for nearly a decade. From its inception, the SJC has relied heavily on data to develop reform strategies and assess progress toward initiative goals across participating sites. Data are also used to develop research and lessons learned for the larger criminal legal field, as a way to advance fair and effective reform work on a broader scale. The SJC Research Consortium (Consortium), managed by CUNY ISLG, was established in 2019 to develop and carry out research.

Synthesizing Research into New Priorities for Criminal Legal Reform

To honor the upcoming decennial milestone, in 2023 we began leading an entirely new work stream in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation and its affiliates to review and summarize lessons learned from across SJC-funded research projects and initiatives. The goal of this SJC synthesis work is to tap into our unique bird’s eye view to identify issues within the SJC research priorities that inform our work and the field at large.

As part of this new work, we are cataloguing and reviewing all SJC-funded research to better understand this collective knowledge, including important lessons on how to change systems, what impacts reform strategies have on individuals and communities, and how to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities. As the SJC continues to fund work through its various mechanisms, we will add new findings to our synthesized learnings to keep current on what know about achieving a more just and equitable criminal legal system, so that we can use this knowledge to drive our collective work.

The recently published Research Year in-Review offers a preview of the first chapter of our journey. It presents some common themes and preliminary findings related to the Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities research priority area that has guided SJC work. As this work is in its earlier stages, the learnings shared there and summarized here are not inclusive of all research funded by the SJC to date, and findings will continue to be expanded throughout 2024.

Even during preliminary synthesis stages however, several themes emerged:

• Racial and ethnic disparities won’t naturally fall with general reduction in jail populations. Specially targeted efforts are required to achieve this.

• Restrictions on who can participate in programming like diversion and deflection—also known as eligibility criteria— pose significant barriers to services, program buy-in and uptake, and create multiple forms of bias leading to disparate outcomes.

• At the aggregate level, progress on reducing racial and ethnic disparities has not been made as quickly as progress in reducing jail populations, but research has uncovered a myriad of ways that harms have been reduced for BIPOC individuals enmeshed with the criminal legal system.

• Programs with multiple participation/completion requirements can be counterproductive to the goals they are trying to achieve.

• Deflection rates are not always equitable, but do keep individuals out of the criminal legal system—especially those with mental health and substance abuse disorders.

• Diversion programs are showing preliminary, but positive results for the Black juvenile population, and have the potential to reduce disparities for new convictions and new jail admissions.

• Population Review Teams do have the potential to reduce racial and ethnic disparities, but the small number of cases reviewed each year lead to minimal impacts. However, strict eligibility criteria can actually create disparities in terms of who’s cases are selected for review.

• Bail reform can reduce disparities by ensuring that more defendants are being Released on Recognizance (ROR) for certain types of cases during the pretrial phase. Additionally, eliminating cash bail reduces the burden of paying bail which typically falls to BIPOC individuals that cannot afford it.

• Black individuals tend to be incarcerated more than any other group for probation violations. Programs that are meant to expedite release for those detailed for violations can have significant impacts on Black individuals.

• Findings on pleas are mixed, but indicate that Black individuals tend to face worse plea outcomes, especially for drug and weapon offenses.

• The role and presence of a defense provider at bond hearings can lead to more equitable outcomes.

For more information about 2023 SJC research published, new projects launched, SJC media mentions, and more detailed information on synthesis work, visit the full 2023 Research Year-in-Review.

CUNY ISLG has launched a new process for soliciting ideas and approaches from SJC Consortium members – an opportunity to submit letters of intent (LOIS) to pitch research projects to the CUNY ISLG Consortium team! CUNY ISLG will now accept LOIs for research proposals from current Consortium members on a rolling basis throughout the calendar year. These LOIs are intended to be short 2-3 page submissions describing research ideas that touch on one more of the SJC priority areas and advance SJC research goals and objectives, particularly around knowledge development. The requirements and guidelines for submitting LOIs as well as information on the review process can be found here.