Topic: Featured Jurisdictions

Earlier this month, the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform released A More Just New York City, a report detailing its recommendations for reforming New York City’s criminal justice system. Based on a full year of inquiry, the Commission unanimously recommended closing Rikers Island jail, reducing the city’s jail population by half, and moving towards a borough-based jail system.

The Commission’s report marks a landmark moment for criminal justice in New York City. Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that it is now the city’s official policy to close the Rikers Island jail.

Written with support from three members of the Safety and Justice team—the Center for Court Innovation, the Vera Institute of Justice, and CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance—the report embodies many of the core elements of the Safety and Justice Challenge, namely the strategic use of data to keep individuals out of jail at every step of the justice process.

The Commission was convened in April 2016 following City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s call for an entity to explore “how we can get the population of Rikers [Island] to be so small that the dream of shutting it down becomes a reality.” Chaired by former New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and comprised of 27 members from a wide range of backgrounds, the Commission spent a year analyzing local data, engaging with experts and stakeholders, and studying national models for justice reform.

Due in large part to a well-documented culture of violence and the Island’s isolation, Rikers has become notorious as a national symbol of broken justice, making its closure a monumental step not just for New York City, but for the country. The Island’s seclusion from New York City communities has promoted an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality, created enormous operational inefficiencies, and taken a powerful toll both in financial terms—it costs $247,000 to incarcerate a person for one year—and in human impact, disrupting the lives of thousands of individuals along with their families, housing, education, and employment opportunities.

A More Just New York City outlines concrete strategies for reducing the current jail population from 9,700 to fewer than 5,000—a size that would enable the city to shutter Rikers Island and replace it with a borough-based system over the next ten years. On any given day, three quarters of the city’s jail population is detained pretrial without having been convicted of a crime, largely because they cannot afford bail. The report proposes reforms to the bail system, including the elimination of cash bail, and investments in pretrial diversion services that can substantially reduce the number of individuals detained in jail while awaiting a disposition.

A significantly reduced jail population would enable the city to transition to a community-based model with facilities located in close proximity to existing courthouses in each borough. Moving away from the outdated design of the Island’s current facilities, borough-based facilities would embody state-of-the-art principles in jail design that foster a healthy and humane environment for the people detained and working within them. The Commission also undertook a robust study of the future of the Island beyond its use as a jail facility, focusing on pathways to transform the Island from a place of harm to a site of progress and benefit for the city. The report recommends using the Island to expand LaGuardia Airport and locate greatly-needed green infrastructure that would meet the city’s growing needs, while producing significant economic activity and employment opportunities.

Despite national trends, over the past twenty years New York City has shown that it is possible to simultaneously reduce crime rates and the use of incarceration. Yet as has been well-documented, much more work is needed. Exemplifying the goals of the Safety and Justice Challenge, A More Justice New York City provides a roadmap for New York City and jurisdictions around the country to significantly reduce and re-envision their jail systems to embody basic human and civic values of fairness and justice.

New York City is a Safety and Justice Challenge partner site.

The Hampden County, Massachusetts correctional system has in its custody offenders who have been sentenced to two and a half years or less, pretrial detainees for all crimes, and state and federal inmates who are reentering their communities in Hampden County. The system, which includes four separate facilities at four different levels of security, is a member of the Large Jail Network, meaning it has an average daily population of 1,000 inmates or more. But the Hampden County system used to be even larger—it has reduced its inmate population by 30 percent since 2008, resulting in an annual savings of 13.1 million dollars compared to what the annual budget would be if the inmate count had not been reduced. The current inmate count is 624 people fewer on a daily basis than it was in 2008, and the three-year recidivism rate has been reduced by 27% since 2001.

This reduction of inmates, resultant cost savings, and dramatically reduced recidivism is a direct result of the broad and deep effort that the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department staff makes to support those in its custody in picking up the tools and directions needed to build a better life. Specifically, the Hampden County Correctional Center has a policy whereby those in its custody are expected to spend up to 40 hours per week in activities, such as work within the institution or in programs that prepare them to be productive citizens. These programs address important issues such as substance abuse, education, employment readiness, housing placement, victim impact awareness, and spiritual growth.

The sheriff’s department has also developed a three-month long continuum of gradual, supervised, and supported community reentry by offenders and has partnered with 300 community nonprofits to assist in its offender reentry effort.

As one example of reentry programming, our Day Reporting program—the first of its kind in the nation, begun in 1987—allows people at the end of their sentences to live at home as they are monitored by GPS and Day Reporting staff. They adhere to a strict daily schedule of community programs and work, report in daily, and are subject to urine and breathalyzer substance use screening tests. The cost to supervise an offender in Day Reporting is considerably less than the cost of 24/7 incarceration in a correctional facility.

Hampden County’s recent history offers verifiable, measurable, quantitative proof that a focused concentration on “corrections,” rather than warehousing of offenders, can be hugely successful for both individuals and cost savings, while maintaining public safety.

Local organizers have galvanized an entire region in favor of shutting down the Workhouse, a place they see as emblematic of official indifference towards the plight of needy residents. 

The first time Inez Bordeaux told her story in front of a crowd, she was nervous.

It was April 2018 and dozens of people were packed into a small music venue in St. Louis to raise money for a campaign called Close the Workhouse. The fundraiser doubled as a launch party for the campaign, which is focused on building political pressure to shut down the city’s medium-security jail, known as the Workhouse.

“The very existence of the Workhouse shows me that this city is willing to throw people away,” said Bordeaux, a nurse and mother of four who spent 30 days in the Workhouse in 2016.

She took a deep breath as she described the roaches and rats in the group cell she shared with other women. Water leaked from the ceilings, she said, and black mold grew across the walls. City officials have maintained that the facility is clean and well-functioning.

“Being in a place that’s not fit for animals—let alone humans—and being treated like you’re less than nothing changes you in a way that leaves a stain on you,” she told the crowd. “It’s irreversible.”

Months earlier, nonprofit law firm ArchCity Defenders had filed a lawsuit against the city over conditions at the Workhouse, calling them “unspeakably hellish” and “inhumane”—allegations the city disputes.

The lawsuit came after a July 2017 heatwave, during which people locked inside the 53-year-old brick building screamed for help. As temperatures soared, organizers raised money to bail people out of the Workhouse. Then, they started planning a campaign to shut it down.

But the organizing that led to Close the Workhouse actually started years earlier, in 2014, after Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Many people around the country know that Brown’s death led to an uprising in the Ferguson suburb of St. Louis in 2014. But the activists who started out protesting in the streets back then have not stopped working. Five years later, they continue to demand accountability as they build political power.

“We started with policing and we went straight to politics,” said Michelle Higgins, the lead organizer for Close the Workhouse. “We decided that people who have power need to be held accountable by the people who put them in power.”

I spoke with Higgins about her work while reporting on Close the Workhouse for 70 Million, an open-source podcast about justice reform efforts across the country, which receives funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge.

Along with prominent St. Louis organizer Kayla Reed, Higgins co-directs Action St. Louis—a black-led millennial activist collective. Last year, the group helped unseat Bob McCulloch, the St. Louis county prosecutor who declined to bring charges against Officer Wilson. McCulloch held the prosecutor seat for 28 years before his loss to former Ferguson councilman Wesley Bell. Bell campaigned on a criminal justice reform platform—much like St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who took office in 2017 and has been working with the Vera Institute of Justice to implement data-driven reforms to reduce incarceration and racial disparities.

As policymakers started moving toward reform, Action St. Louis teamed up with other grassroots groups and nonprofits to host community discussions on ways to reimagine public safety. And they made it a priority to center the ideas of people directly affected by the system, Higgins said.

“And that’s where we got Close the Workhouse,” she said. “It’s something we’ve all wanted to see. But it’s not something that we came up with because it’s trendy, it looks good and it rolls well off the tongue—impacted people were at the center of launching this campaign because they are the ones who brought this demand.”

What’s more, they want the city to take the jail’s annual $16 million budget and reinvest it in community programs and social services.

Inez Bordeaux has grown into one of the campaign’s main organizers since speaking at the fundraiser last year. She has shared her story countless times—both on the streets and in the halls of power.

Twice a week, she coordinates volunteers and heads out to busy St. Louis intersections to hand out fliers and tell people why she wants to shut down the jail. And last November, she stood in front of a group of aldermen, which are the equivalent of city council members, and told them all about her time inside the Workhouse.

“That 30 days has radicalized me, it has changed me,” she said emphatically, standing behind a podium inside St. Louis City Hall. “And so when I say that I want the Workhouse to be closed—don’t misunderstand me. I’m not asking. It is not a request. I am demanding it.”

Earlier this month, members of the Safety and Justice Challenge Network met in Denver to discuss progress on our shared goals of reducing jail incarceration while creating fairer, more effective justice systems. Stakeholders from 39 jurisdictions gathered to share their experiences and expertise in developing and implementing reform strategies, while also securing buy-in from their local communities.

A common theme that has emerged from the on-the-ground work is that securing buy-in can be a difficult process. To help facilitate that process, the conference hosted several sessions on community engagement and community partnerships.

Storytelling—illustrating the actual lives impacted by our work—is a highly effective way to demonstrate the need for change, and influence the public opinion needed to support data-driven reform. We’ve seen this before—as in the tragic death of Kalief Browder—whose story in The New Yorker helped propel the dialogue around closing Rikers Island jail.

At the Denver meeting, the power of storytelling to drive change was examined by a panel of storytellers—moderated by the MacArthur Foundation’s Patrick Griffin and Lauren Pabst—who came together to share their work with the conference:

• Filmmaker Garrett Bradley directed a short film for the New York Times about her friend Aloné, a young woman in New Orleans who decides to marry her fiancé while he is incarcerated.
• Independent Producer Eve Abrams produced a series for New Orleans Public Radio sharing stories of those incarcerated across Louisiana and their loved ones on the outside.
• StoryCorps Editor-in-Chief Michael Garofalo presented the StoryCorps Justice Project—a new initiative supported by the Challenge that includes audio files, animated gifs, and illustrations to further tell the stories of people affected by jail incarceration.

Each panelist explained his or her unique path to telling the stories of others. It was an important reminder of the power of storytelling to hold people together, and how shared values around equality and justice can connect people across disparate paths.

Panelists stressed the importance of not only telling stories, but listening to them as well. Take, for instance, the story of Jamal Faison and Born Blackwell, animated and audio-recorded by the StoryCorps Justice Project. Jamal, a 20-year-old college student, was arrested for attempting to steal mobile devices from subway riders in New York, but maintains that he wasn’t involved in the robbery. Jamal was incarcerated and awaited trial for eight months on Rikers Island, before he pled guilty and was released from custody. His uncle Born visited him almost weekly while he was incarcerated, and Jamal credits Born with helping him navigate life after incarceration, which was filled with barriers to important needs like housing, employment, and other social services.

Jamal’s story is a perfect illustration of the ease with which an arrest can upend someone’s life, and how the consequences of incarceration can continue long after someone has left jail or prison. I encourage you to watch the animation, listen to the Justice Project prodcast, see other stories from the Justice Project, and explore the work by Garrett and Eve. People like Jamal and Born are hiding in plain sight in the jurisdictions we all work in, and hearing their stories allows us to view our system of incarceration through a different lens while driving home the immediate need for reform.

*Pictured from left: Patrick Griffin, Lauren Pabst, Garrett Bradley, Eve Abrams, and Michael Garofalo at the Safety and Justice Challenge conference in Denver

Located in eastern Missouri just west of the City of St. Louis, St. Louis County has a population of more than one million residents, making it the most populous county in the state. The 21^st Judicial Circuit, located in the county, is also the largest and busiest in the state, handling some 88,000 cases every year. With the support of the MacArthur Foundation, St. Louis County is implementing several strategies to reduce its jail population safely, including expanding its pretrial release program, expediting cases for probation violations, expanding the use of treatment courts and deploying an interdepartmental jail population review team.

What were some of the issues occurring in the St. Louis County justice system that prompted you to apply for the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC)?

St. Louis County and the University of Missouri – St. Louis applied for the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) in 2015, shortly after the events in Ferguson, Mo. As for many jurisdictions across the nation, Ferguson was a turning point in the conversation about justice reform in our community, adding greater urgency to ongoing work by stakeholders in the County committed to improving the justice system.

At the time, the St. Louis County Jail was at capacity. We wanted to reduce the jail population and improve case processing in the courts and we felt that the SJC would offer us a framework and resources for reform. The county also wanted to address equity and racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. There are embedded systemic problems of poverty, housing, substance use, unemployment and education access that have exacerbated racial and ethnic disparities in our jail population. We felt that the SJC would provide an opportunity for the community to address these problems, as well as, be a medium to bring criminal justice stakeholders, service providers and the larger community together to collaborate on finding solutions.

What are the main drivers of your jail population?

At the beginning of the SJC, we conducted a detailed analysis of the jail population to determine the drivers. This was one of the first times that the county had an opportunity to systematically review data on the jail and the justice system as a whole. The pretrial population is one of the major population drivers. We found that many of these individuals were staying in jail for an inordinate amount of time (more than 100 days) due to their inability to post bail. This issue reflects the systemic factors mentioned before, such as poverty, unemployment, homelessness and substance use. The sheer volume of cases filed in St. Louis County presents a  challenge to efficient and timely case processing. Through our analysis, we also found that a large portion of the jail population consisted of individuals who had returned to jail due to a probation violation.

There had never been an analysis of our case processing system until the SJC. That analysis suggested the need for greater collaboration and coordination among leadership and staff at the jail, courts and probation, in order to improve efficiency in processing individuals being held pretrial and identify non-violent individuals who can be released without impacting the community’s safety.

Can you give an overview of the programs, policies and practices that St. Louis County has implemented as part of your SJC work?

Our first strategy is to enhance our pretrial release program. Although a pretrial release program existed before we started the Challenge in 2015, it has been expanded to include more individuals in our jail. We are working with local social service providers to provide mental health and substance use treatment, education and other social services to some of those individuals who have been released. As a result, not only are more individuals being released, they are now better served in the community. We are in the process of adopting the Laura and John Arnold Foundation’s Public Safety Assessment (PSA) tool and plan to start using it in fall 2019. We hope it will continue to provide relevant criteria on which to increase the number of individuals released pretrial and reduce racial and ethnic disparities.

The second strategy is to expedite cases for individuals who have returned to jail for violating the terms of their probation. These individuals make up a significant percentage of our jail population, and they generally have longer lengths of stay. This primarily had been due to the lack of coordination between the probation department and the jail. Now, however, probation and parole officers are working in the jail to screen people being held for parole violations and fast track them back to probation, or to the Missouri Department of Corrections if their probation has been revoked. The goal is to reduce the average length of stay in jail for these individuals.

Our third strategy is the convening of a Jail Population Review Team to identify best practices for effective, safe and just case processing while maintaining community safety. The team meets weekly to review cases of incarcerated individuals charged with less serious, non-violent felonies, and identify those who can be safely released from jail, or whose cases can be expedited in the courts. The team considers barriers to release, alternatives to incarceration, justifications for alternatives to incarceration and recommendations for next steps. The team’s recommendations are then forwarded to prosecutors, public defenders and judges handling the cases. The team includes: the Presiding Judge of St. Louis County; circuit judges who handle criminal cases; county justice department employees; including the staff psychologist; law enforcement officers; public defenders; prosecutors; a member of the criminal bar; a mental health court representative; community service providers and community advocates. This strategy has led to a significant improvement in collaboration and efficiency in the St. Louis County criminal justice system. By engaging stakeholders from different agencies in asking questions and collaborative problem-solving, we are not only saving time, but building trust and strong relationships throughout the system.

Our fourth strategy is increasing the use of treatment courts as an alternative to incarceration. St. Louis County currently has mental health, veteran’s, drug and DWI courts. When individuals in jail meet certain criteria, they are eligible to participate in treatment court programs as an alternative to incarceration. The 21^st Circuit recently expanded its mental health court and hired a mental health coordinator to connect individuals in jail who have mental health issues to services in the community. The court is in the process of establishing a mental health resource center, funded by a three-year grant from the Sidney R. Baer Foundation.

The Veteran’s Treatment Court was founded by former Presiding Judge Douglas R. Beach in 2015. It provides mental health and substance use treatment, housing assistance and workforce training for veterans of all ages – including those who served in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Marine, Judge Beach takes a lot of pride in helping those whose courage and sacrifice have helped preserve our freedom and liberty. Our DWI and Drug Treatment Court programs are offered as alternatives for individuals with substance use issues. Participants in these programs – which can last up to two years –  may be required to perform community service, attend individual therapy and/or group therapy and make regular check-ins with the court. These courts have periodic graduations for individuals who successfully complete their treatment programs. These programs have sharply reduced recidivism rates, helped preserve families and helped individuals live healthier, more productive lives in the community.

Who is involved in your Safety and Justice Challenge efforts? Was everyone on board from the beginning or did you have to convince people to sign on?

We have had strong involvement from leaders within the justice system from the beginning. Individuals from the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s office, the criminal bar, the county justice department, probation and parole offices, judges in the 21^st Circuit Court and law enforcement officers are heavily involved in SJC efforts. The collaboration has led to better communication and greater trust across the board. By looking at the justice-involved population from multiple perspectives, we are better able to identify areas where we can make real progress. Although there has been some turnover in St. Louis County government (including the appointment of a new County Executive and the election of a new Prosecuting Attorney), those involved in the SJC have maintained a strong commitment to the process and to reform. The reform agenda of the Prosecuting Attorney, Wesley Bell, has been vital to the expansion of the use of treatment courts as an alternative to incarceration.

The events that took place in Ferguson, Mo., in 2015 made justice stakeholders in the county want to actively engage in systems reform. This momentum has been constant through the entire time of the Challenge and has helped us achieve our goals. There is strong bipartisan support among county leaders and residents for reducing mass incarceration and addressing racial disparities. Within the past few years, there has been an evolving conversation about what can we do to keep the community safe while finding effective alternatives for individuals involved in the criminal justice system. The MacArthur Foundation and the technical assistance providers for the SJC have provided a forum for this work and helped bring people from across the system together on a regular basis to actively collaborate on reform. Everyone involved has been excited about the potential of the Challenge’s impact on the jail population and how people working in the system view and work with one another.

How is St. Louis County using data and sharing information among agencies and systems to help with your Safety and Justice Challenge efforts?

Data has been an integral part of our SJC efforts from the beginning. During the planning phase, we used data to look at different aspects of the jail population, specifically how long individuals spend in jail on average and identifying racial and ethnic disparities. Data was key to bringing people on board and to showing where we should focus our SJC strategies. We are also using data to evaluate the impact of our SJC programs and strategies. For example, we are using data to evaluate the outcomes of our pretrial release program, tracking whether individuals are returning to court and identifying gaps in services. We use this data to inform our day-to-day decisions.

Data also plays a major part in the deliberations of our Jail Population Review Team. We analyze jail population data on a weekly basis. This data provides our team benchmarks and goals to strive toward. Data is also integral for our goal to reduce racial and ethnic disparities within St. Louis County’s justice system. The data shows that, like many jurisdictions, racial and ethnic disparities exist at all levels of our system. This is particularly true of the average length of stay in jail. Many persons of color do not have money for bail or legal representation at their first court appearance, which can result in a reduced likelihood for pretrial release and therefore longer jail stays. This data can help us identify obstructions in the case processing system and inform our strategies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities moving forward.

What outcomes have you seen so far and what do you hope to see long term?

We have already seen positive outcomes from our SJC strategies. Our original goal was to reduce the jail population by 15-19 percent. We have already surpassed our goal and have reduced the population by 24.4 percent. We have also reduced the average length of stay for individuals in jail due to probation violations from 99 days to 10-15 days on average. The share of our jail population that is incarcerated due to probation technical violations has decreased from 29 percent to 13 percent. We have seen a decline in racial and ethnic disparities for the probation violation group as well. We have reduced the population of individuals with non-violent felony offenses in jail by half (from 35.3 percent to 15.3 percent of the total jail population) because of the expansion of our pretrial release program and formation of the Population Review Team. These reductions save taxpayers money and return people to their families and jobs while awaiting trial.

Our biggest goals moving forward are to continue to right-size our jail and reduce case processing times. Our biggest challenge moving forward is reducing racial and ethnic disparities. Underlying community challenges in St. Louis County such as substance use, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, mental illness and lack of education exacerbate racial and ethnic disparities. Resolving these chronic problems demands coordination among many different county stakeholders and agencies – both public and private. We will continue to look for solutions at the intersection of justice and social services in the community. We are grateful for the MacArthur Foundation and the opportunity to be a part of the SJC. This work takes time and we have stumbled along the way, but it is possible with sustained effort. We encourage other communities to put the effort into justice system reform. Our story is one of many changes and shows how much people want to reform the justice system.

NACo would like to thank Christine Bertelson, Director of Strategic Communications for the St. Louis County Circuit Court, and Dr. Beth Huebner, professor at The University of Missouri-St. Louis, for speaking with us about their efforts

This blog post originally appeared on www.naco.org.