Topic: Featured Jurisdictions

More than 250 participants assembled in Seattle on October 5-7 for the fourth national Safety and Justice Challenge Network Meeting.  Convened for the initiative by the Pretrial Justice Institute, the event drew teams from Safety and Justice Challenge Network sites across the country, as well as representatives of coordinating and consulting organizations and strategic allies, for two and a half days of panels, presentations, and workshops on the theory and practice of reducing excessive jail usage and making justice systems more fair and effective.

https://youtu.be/b5tei79dTXs?list=PLan_fSNNRi6VezHEEKDj-CYMwWFUMK7KQ

Highlights of the conference included updates on the work underway from each of the twenty Challenge Network sites.  Attendees heard presentations on the Data-Driven Justice Initiative, the Stepping Up Initiative, and related criminal justice reform movements taking shape across the nation.  Panels explored such issues as the role of judges in sparking and sustaining reforms, the best ways to ensure that people with mental health needs are served outside the criminal justice system, the important lessons local justice system actors can learn from local crises, and valuable tactical advice on implementing change with a broad coalition of stakeholders.  Workshops covered the secrets of organizational culture change, techniques of meaningful community engagement, and a variety of other topics of interest to local reformers.

https://youtu.be/DydCRartK6A?list=PLan_fSNNRi6VezHEEKDj-CYMwWFUMK7KQ

Of course, there were plenty of opportunities to network and socialize as well. Teams from each of the sites got to meet among themselves away from the pressures of the office. Judges and court administrators, sheriffs and jail administrators, police, prosecutors, defenders, elected officials, and other important stakeholder groups had a chance to come together with their peers from other sites—to share techniques and backstories, troubleshoot problems, and brainstorm possibilities.  To be, in short, a learning community.

That was the whole idea.  The goal of the Safety and Justice Challenge is to focus the energies of the criminal justice field on developing, demonstrating, and spreading solutions to the problem of jail misuse and overuse. To achieve this, the members of the Challenge Network will have to lead the way—not only changing practice in their own communities, but bringing others alongside.  That’s why meetings like the one in Seattle matter.  You can’t build a movement without them.

Planning for the next Safety and Justice Challenge Network meeting, to be held in Denver on May 8-9, 2017, has just begun.  But we know it’s going to be even bigger.  In addition to the twenty Challenge Network sites, we’ll have representatives from communities selected to receive support from the Safety and Justice Challenge Innovation Fund, which will be announced early next year. Small grants from the Innovation Fund, being administered by the Urban Institute, will seed jail-incarceration reduction projects all over—which means not just more people and places engaged in local criminal justice reform, but more excitement, more ideas, more sharing, and more potential breakthroughs.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has embarked on a new program of investment in local criminal justice reform at a crucial time in American history. The primary institutions of local justice—police, courts, and jails—have recently come under unprecedented scrutiny, as the nation’s attention has been riveted by a series of tragedies in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, Louisiana, Minnesota, Dallas, Milwaukee, and elsewhere. This is the challenging environment in which the work of the Safety and Justice Challenge has begun.

That work is predicated on the belief that our nation relies excessively on incarceration as a response to crime and social disorder, and that the problem must be tackled first in the jails that anchor local systems of justice. With more than 11 million annual admissions, America’s jails have devastating impacts on individuals, families, neighborhoods, and our society as a whole. The effects are especially toxic and divisive in communities of color, which suffer disproportionately from the damaging consequences of overuse and misuse of jails. National leadership is needed to focus the energies of the field on developing, demonstrating and spreading more balanced approaches that reflect a fair, just, and equitable system of justice.

From the outset we have been surprised and gratified by the field’s embrace of the Safety and Justice Challenge. When the Challenge was first announced in the fall of 2014, a total of 191 jurisdictions spanning 45 states and accounting for roughly one-third of the nation’s total jail capacity, sought to participate. We chose 20 applicant sites to support through a data analysis and collaborative planning process, designed to yield actionable plans for safely reducing local jail incarceration and racial and ethnic disparities in jail usage. Eleven have now been selected for a second round of deep implementation funding. With an initial two years of support and the help and advice of a consortium of national experts, our “core” or implementation sites are now beginning to undertake policy and practice changes intended to keep people out of jail who don’t belong there, diverting them where possible, shortening their stays, and testing and strengthening safe alternatives. The other nine “partner” sites remain active members of the Challenge Network learning community, receiving grants to support continued progress and planning, and will be eligible for subsequent rounds of funding in 2017.

The Network will soon get even bigger. A new Innovation Fund, established by the Foundation at the Urban Institute, will shortly begin providing seed funding to many more jurisdictions seeking support for new approaches. Our intention is not just to provide short-term support for change, but to build capacity for larger reform efforts over the longer term, and thus to help grow a broader national movement to address the overuse and misuse of jails.

We are surrounding all these local efforts with investments in communications, research and evaluation, and strategic alliances with key stakeholder groups, not only to support change in local sites, but to amplify the results achieved and soften the ground for the spread of reform at the national level.

While it is still early to say what will be the results of all this activity, we are already learning that every local criminal justice system is different—and that all are, in some sense, the same. Our core sites, charged with developing their own solutions to local problems, are working from different starting points, tackling different issues, operating within different legal structures and cultural contexts, and employing different levers to achieve incarceration reduction goals. At the same time, they all struggle with the historic legacy of racism, and the stark racial and ethnic disparities that burden local criminal justice systems as a result. All face challenges stemming from breakdowns and shortfalls in community mental health, drug treatment, education, and other local systems. And in order to make significant changes, all need the cooperation of a multitude of agencies and stakeholder groups that do not traditionally work together.

Yet we are encouraged and energized by our network of partners, by the enthusiasm they bring to the work, and by the progress they have already made in collaborating across systems, using data to drive planning and problem-solving, and engaging their communities in planning and implementing change.

We recognize, as we have from the outset, that there will be no quick victories here, and that we have a lot more to learn. However, we are more convinced than ever of the importance of this work and of the need for commitment to accelerating the momentum required to reach unstoppable change in how America thinks about and uses its jails in the context of more fair, equitable and effective local systems of justice.

This Director’s Reflection originally appeared on the Foundation’s website. 

As revealed in a new report—Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform—by the Vera Institute of Justice and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, the number of women incarcerated in local jails has grown 14-fold since 1970.

While incarcerated women share many of the same experiences and characteristics of incarcerated men, women can experience incarceration and its collateral consequences in unique ways. Unlike incarcerated men, women are often single parents and enter jails with higher rates of mental illness. Because women earn less and are less likely to have full-time employment before their arrest, bail, fines, and fees can be even more devastating to them. This is especially true for women of color—almost half of all single black and Latina women have zero or negative net wealth.

Once women enter the criminal justice system, they often encounter policies, programs, and services designed for the majority of the people moving through it: men. Standard practices and procedures for law enforcement and correctional staff can create or reignite traumatic experiences for these women, the majority of whom come into the justice systems having experienced high rates of violence and are at higher risk of experiencing sexual violence in custody.

Shifting attention and resources away from policing minor offenses and leveraging existing community resources and services can provide opportunities to intervene early on during anyone’s experience with the justice system and safely address her needs in the community. These approaches can especially benefit women. Some jurisdictions—including the twenty that are participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge—have been able to implement reforms at the very front end of the criminal justice process to divert individuals away from incarceration, minimizing the harm that can accompany even a short stay in jail.

Decline to arrest

According to the most recent national data, 82 percent of women are in jail for nonviolent offenses, and cities are increasingly rethinking the need to use jail as a response to these crimes. In 2007, the Baltimore Police Department adopted a policy of declining to arrest people for low-level, quality of life offenses. A report on the women held in Baltimore City’s jail found that in 2010, the number of women had declined by 15 percent as compared to 2005. Similarly, following the success of the City of Philadelphia’s decision to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, the mayor signed a directive for officers to issue civil citations—instead of criminal violations—for certain low-level offenses, such as disorderly conduct and failure to disperse. The city projects the strategy will divert more than 10,000 cases out of the criminal system annually.

Pre-arrest crisis intervention for people struggling with mental illness

On average, 32 percent of women in jail have a serious mental illness – more than double the rate of men in jails and six times the rate of the general public. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the police and other first responders can call Community Outreach Psychiatric Emergency Services (COPES) for assistance with people experiencing mental health crises in the community. COPES provides mobile crisis intervention services and can refer people to community-based treatment when needed. Between July 2014 and June 2016, COPES received more than 10,000 calls for service. Of those calls, 3,900 were for women, and only 3 percent of those calls resulted in women being taken to jail.

These programs are examples of opportunities for stakeholders to divert women away from incarceration and allow them to remain in their communities. In addition to decreasing the harm caused by prolonged justice-system involvement, community-based programming and services can offer respite to the constant economic disadvantages in women’s lives that so often affect their children. Though establishing these strategies may take considerable effort, reducing the number of women held in jails is achievable and an essential component of creating safer communities.

This post originally appeared in the National League of Cities’ CitiesSpeak blog.

This spring, the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, is sponsoring its first Reentry Resource Fair. Vendors, employers, service providers and city agencies will set up tables and displays, hoping to attract the attention of the members of the public who have come to the event. Their intended targets, men and women, young and not so young, all have one thing in common: they have, at some point in their lives, been convicted of a felony.

The Resource Fair marks another milestone in Charlottesville’s evolution as a “Second Chance City”. Over the past six years, Charlottesville has been working to make sure that folks returning from incarceration are welcomed to reintegrate and become contributing members of the community. What’s remarkable is that almost everyone – the Chamber of Commerce, judges and prosecutors, City Council – is on board.

A crisis was the catalyst for building the consensus around Charlottesville’s commitment. In 2010, the community was facing the need to spend several million dollars for a new wing for its overcrowded regional jail, as well as the skyrocketing per-diem costs of increasing numbers of inmates. Certified for 329 beds, the jail was regularly reporting daily populations approaching 600, and continued growth seemed inevitable.

Instead, the City and neighboring Albemarle County, who jointly run the local jail, applied to be part of the National Institute of Corrections effort to form an evidence-based decision making initiative to look at ways to reduce the community’s reliance on the jail and improve public safety. Originally targeted specifically at controlling recidivism, the effort has grown to include prevention, diversion, housing, jail programming, mental health care, reentry preparation, and reintegration into the community for returning citizens. It has become the model for a new statewide evidence-based decision making practice. Subsequent state and federal grants have helped the community share data, institute risk assessment practices and create innovative programs in the jail and in the community.

Programs in the jail itself where inmates can earn educational credits, get work certifications like small engine repair, and participate in therapeutic group work helps them return with skills and strengths they may not have had before. A six-month re-entry employment program with the City Parks and Rec Department gives returning residents a chance to earn money while learning job skills and earning a good reference to future employment. The removal of criminal record disclosure on City job applications, the coordination of services, and attention to the needs of families provide the supports that help returning citizens succeed.

And it’s working. This year, the average daily population at the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail is 459, and it continues to drop.

Why Charlottesville is a second chance city

Saving money isn’t the only reason Charlottesville has committed to being a Second Chance City. Almost everyone our community incarcerates ends up coming home eventually. Of course, our hope is that they will reconnect with family, get a job, and never offend again. And that is the intention of the overwhelming number of people who are released from incarceration. But even in the best cases, there are lots of challenges. People leaving incarceration often are returning to families where they have done harm, and relationships have been damaged. Parents and children have been traumatized – not only by the crime that led to incarceration, but by the separation itself. Returning family members may be behind on child support and court cost payments, banned from the public housing neighborhood where their families live because of their criminal record, and unable to convince employers to take a chance on a former felon.

Frustration and self-doubt, while natural under these circumstances, don’t always lead to the best choices, and that is often when people violate their probation or re-offend and end up re-incarcerated – re-traumatizing their families, and making it even harder to be successful the next time.

Two key responsibilities of cities are providing for public safety and for the education and welfare of children. If we help former felons engage with their families, with employment, and with the community, they are less likely to re-offend and more likely to set a good example to their children and to other young people. What’s more, children with both fathers and mothers in their lives do better in school, are less likely to live in poverty, and are less likely to become involved in the justice system themselves.

So Charlottesville remains deeply committed to being a Second Chance City – one that recognizes the potential of its returning citizens to become contributing members of the local economy and assets to our community. Our belief in them helps to make their potential a reality.

Click here to review more information on the elements of Charlottesville’s Second Chance Policy.

This post originally appeared on The National League of Cities’ CitiesSpeak blog. 

As COVID-19 presents daily challenges for city leaders across the United States, the need to attend to the risk and reality of the virus spreading disproportionately within certain communities, including those impacted by the justice system, intensifies.

To address this, cities continue to make adjustments that protect residents, promote public safety and encourage reform.

A recent meeting of the Criminal Justice Policy Advisors Network – a peer learning group convened by National League of Cities (NLC) through the support of the Safety and Justice Challenge – highlighted examples of the procedural and policy shifts underway in various cities including Philadelphia, Indianapolis and Newark.

“Philadelphia has been committed to criminal justice reform, and our focus on those reforms continues despite the COVID-19 crisis,” said Philadelphia Mayor, Jim Kenney. “We continue to work with our partners in the criminal justice system, the First Judicial District, the District Attorney’s Office, and the Public Defender’s Office, to hold virtual hearings to expedite the release of inmates held for low-level offenses. So far the total prisons population has decreased 13 percent in less than a month since we started this new process.”

“Our first priority during the pandemic is the health and wellness of Newark residents,” said Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. “Prior to COVID-19, all of Newark’s public safety strategies and policies were proactive, data-driven, and through a community-based lens.  We are utilizing the same method and approach in our response to COVID-19. This is the only way that we will have true systemic and sustainable impact to protect the safety of our residents and our City’s future.”

As NLC retains the SJC focus on reducing the use of jails and moving toward equity – and cities race to alter systems in efforts to save lives – local leaders respond with reform, as illustrated in the examples below from three cities:

Rachael Eisenberg, the Director of Policy and Planning with the City of Philadelphia, PA – Office of Criminal Justice:

• Adjust policing practicesfor low level offenses to avoid physical custody until after the pandemic
• Collaboratively work to reduce the number of people being held in custody on low amounts of cash bail
• Work with the courts to increase jail releases for the elderly, medically vulnerable and individuals in custody for and low-level offenses
• Eliminate most jail visits
• Increase sanitation practices within local correctional facilities

Lena Hackett, President of Community Solutions, working under contract with the City of Indianapolis/Marion County, IN Department of Public Safety:

• Law Enforcement issuing citations for low level offenders to reduce jail admissions
• Reduce the jail population by half through releases
• Connect returning citizens to Medicaid upon release to ensure access to healthcare
• Increase virtual response options to calls for first responders, and increase PPE to protect them
• Ensure jails have the appropriate sanitation supplies
• Providing community supervision via telephone and video – not in person

Shoshanna M. Page, Sr. Policy Advisor and Communications Strategist for Mayor Ras Baraka, in coordination with Director of Public Safety, Anthony Ambrose, City of Newark, NJ:

• Engage in daily, city-wide operations to increase awareness of and compliance with social distancing and shelter-in-place mandates
• Issue summonses for people violating the City’s shelter-in-place order and those not maintaining proper six-foot social distancing
• Minimize direct contact between the public and officers via:
• Increased use of telephone and online reporting
• Self-reporting of motor vehicle accidents not involving injury
• Reassignment of personnel into precincts to supplement the uniformed patrol force
• Changes in arrest policy for non-indictable & traffic warrants, minor offenses (increased use of summonses in lieu of arrests in order to decrease risks of exposure)
• Implement a Wellness Unit to conduct health checks for police and fire employees, as well as, distribute personal protective equipment
• Continuously utilize public safety technology and data to map and track COVID-19 cases
• Establish ‘Be Still Mondays,’an initiative encouraging a full City of Newark “shut down” to combat COVID-19 spread
• Suspend parking enforcement, except for those creating a public safety hazard

COVID-19 disproportionately effects communities of color, the same communities that also consistently face inequity within the justice system. Since 2015, the Safety and Justice Challenge has supported efforts in cities and counties to address the systems responsible for overincarceration and inequity. Now, as cities confront this disproportionality in response to the coronavirus, city leaders must take swift and conscious action to alter the same systems.

The National League of Cities will continue to connect with city leaders and share updates and recommendations on justice related reforms as they develop, advance and adapt in response to the pandemic.

—Kirby Gaherty is a Program Manager, Justice Reform & Youth Engagement at the National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education, and Families.

—Andrew Moore is a Director, Youth and Young Adult Connections at the National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education, and Families.