Topic: Interagency Collaboration

Prosecutors are elected by voters to protect the safety and wellbeing of the communities they serve. Removing prosecutors from office can have a chilling effect on the rule of law. It blurs the separation of powers and upends the checks and balances the three branches of government were designed to ensure.

The removal of Florida State Attorney Monique Worrell from her elected prosecutor position is one recent example, but threats to prosecutorial independence are emerging nationwide. Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas have already passed laws making it easier to remove prosecutors from office, and currently there are more than 24 bills in 16 states that would limit the power of prosecutors.

Giving governors the authority to supersede the will of voters and oust a prosecutor impedes a prosecutor’s ability to make the best decisions for their communities and erodes the separation of powers that are central to our democracy. If a prosecutor’s job is at risk, they may be reluctant to adopt promising prosecutorial practices or exercise their discretion to make the tough calls that they believe are right for their communities.

Independence is central to a prosecutor’s ability to be effective, as what a governor or legislator may consider politically popular does not always advance the mission of prosecutors to ensure justice and the safety and wellbeing of their community.

The United States Supreme Court has a long history of validating the importance of prosecutorial independence—from the recent June ruling affirming the United States government’s prosecutorial discretion in immigration to the 1935 case of Berger v. United States, which stated the prosecutor’s “compelling obligation” is “not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”

America is a patchwork of nuanced law and procedure around prosecutorial independence, but the responsibility of elected prosecutors remains constant: to use the lawful discretion of their offices to hold individuals accountable for their actions, protect victims of crime, and work to improve the safety of their communities. Prosecutors should be held accountable for fulfilling these responsibilities, rather than to the political whims of an executive branch.

Each of the three branches of state government should operate independently and none should hold greater power than another. The ramifications of one branch having the power to remove an elected official of another branch, without due process, are far reaching. Should an attorney general have the power to single-handedly remove a governor? Or should a governor have the power to remove a legislator without an impeachment trial?

Our Prosecutorial Independence Policy Brief articulates the role and duties of the prosecutor as “ministers of justice,” and underscores the importance of prosecutorial decision-making and the exercise of discretion to ensure justice, fairness, accountability and community safety. The brief addresses the core tenets of our democracy, including the separation of powers.

The prosecutor’s duty is to fulfil their role as ministers of justice, promoting more equitable, safer, and more just communities. Prosecutorial independence ensures an important separation between politics and the criminal legal system necessary to create safer communities through a more just and equitable legal system.

–The Association of Prosecuting Attorneys is a strategic ally of the Safety and Justice Challenge to uplift practices that work to keep communities safe while lowering jail populations and reducing racial and ethnic disparities.

Each year roughly 200,000 active-duty service members leave the United States military and return to civilian life. While most navigate this transition successfully, many struggle with mental health and substance use disorders, the effects of traumatic brain injury, homelessness, and criminality. One in three veterans report having been arrested and booked into jail at least once, a rate significantly higher than for non-veterans.

People who have served this nation in our armed forces have sacrificed to protect us. It is time for us to better recognize that sacrifice and take steps to ensure our veterans are treated fairly by the justice system. Veterans who encounter the criminal justice system should receive interventions that can help them resume their responsibilities to their families, their communities, and their country.

Last year the Council on Criminal Justice launched a national effort to help make that happen. Its Veterans Justice Commission, on which I serve, is chaired by former U.S. Defense Secretary and U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel and also includes former Defense Secretary and White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, two formerly incarcerated veterans, and other top military, veterans, and criminal justice leaders.

Our mission is straightforward: to examine veterans’ involvement in the criminal justice system and the risk factors that drive it, and to develop recommendations for evidence-based policy changes that enhance safety, health, and justice.

My fellow members and I have learned a lot since embarking on this endeavor. Above all, we have discovered that despite a patchwork of interventions designed to help veterans across the country, too many are falling through the cracks. Here is one example: while Veterans treatment courts have been a pioneering front-end intervention, just 14 percent of counties operate one, and eligibility requirements for such courts exclude many veterans.

Another challenge is that veterans who become incarcerated lose access to health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which prevents them from receiving the specialized treatment they need to address post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other problems. The suicide rate for veterans is approximately 1.5 times higher than the rate among the general population, and it is especially high for veterans leaving incarceration.

In September, the commission released a policy roadmap that encourages the expansion of alternatives to prosecution and incarceration for justice-involved veterans. This blueprint outlines alternative sentencing options that not only recognize veterans’ service, but also consider the fact that their criminal behavior may have been influenced by that service. The options, which include expanded use of pretrial supervision and probation in lieu of a record of conviction or incarceration, are grounded in evidence-based practices. The commission also recommends allowing veterans whose cases are processed through such options to pursue record expungement.

Based on the policy framework a model policy called the Veterans Justice was adopted. This version of the framework will be shared with state legislatures as a blueprint for action on the issue. The policy framework reflects an initial set of recommendations released by the commission in March. Additional recommendations targeting veterans’ transition from service to civilian life will be forthcoming early next year.

As jurisdictions consider this model policy framework, my fellow commissioners and I hope the federal government will incentivize the widespread adoption and effective implementation of these reforms. Many of the framework’s elements will require updating existing systems, training personnel, and conducting ongoing evaluations. Federal funding can serve as a critical resource for jurisdictions pursuing these vital reforms, which will ensure that veterans nationwide can access correctional interventions designed for their specific needs.

I also hope policymakers at the state and federal level consider this disturbing reality: We are prosecuting and imprisoning veterans while denying them the care and consideration they need and deserve. And we are doing so even though their criminal justice involvement is often due, at least in part, to their willingness to fight for their country. As a result, we are not only doing a disservice to veterans, but also jeopardizing the safety of the public they once fought to protect.

The challenge of veterans returning home from wars and landing in the criminal justice system is not new. But our response can be.

Bria Gillum, Senior Program Officer, Criminal Justice for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Aswad Thomas, Vice President of the Alliance for Safety and Justice (ASJ), appeared at The Atlantic Festival 2023 in Washington, D.C., in a talk entitled “How to Invest in Safety and Well-Being.” It was part of a session underwritten by the MacArthur Foundation on criminal justice reform.

Bria interviewed Aswad, who survived a robbery attempt that left him with two life-altering gunshot wounds, about his experience as a survivor of violence, and his journey to embrace the Trauma Recovery Center (TRC) model of addressing the needs of crime survivors, who often face the biggest barriers to accessing healing services.

After Aswad left the hospital with his gunshot wounds, there were no support services, or even information about where to look.

“My story might sound unique, but it’s not unique at all,” he said at the conference. “In this country, three million people are crime victims every year, but only nine percent of people get access to victim services.”

Thomas began organizing crime victims and advocating for victims’ rights, and today he is working to expand the ASJ’s national network of crime survivors to elevate their voices in criminal justice reform.

“When you think about the criminal justice system, the voices of crime victims like me have never been at the center of criminal justice policies,” he said. “One thing that we are trying to do is to elevate this new victims’ rights movement, this is calling for new safety solutions to help stop the cycle of violence.”

In addressing this need for advocacy, services, and resources, Aswad spoke about his organization’s TRC model as a “one-stop shop that provides you with all of the recovery services that you need, without all of the red tape.” The first center was developed at San Francisco General Hospital in 2001. Today, there are 52 TRCs in the United States.

He said community is at the heart of what ASJ does. “What we do is we build community,” Aswad said. “We build community with survivors, providing peer-to-peer support. We build community with law enforcement, with advocates, with legislators, and we build that community so that we can start having conversations around our public safety policies.”

Aswad shared some of ASJ’s accomplishments. “In the past 10 years, we passed about 91 criminal justice and public safety reforms across the country. We’ve changed victim compensation programs in about ten states. We’re helping to provide more protections for victims to be safe from employment protections and housing and protections.”

Another area of advocacy for ASJ is criminal justice reform. “Across this country, crime victims are now organizing to change criminal justice policies,” he said. “Past reforms have reduced incarceration and helped to incentivize more rehabilitation for folks who have caused harm. But also working on reforms to remove the barriers for people coming out of the justice system and back into our communities. We also passed laws, so [that crime victims can] access housing, jobs, education, things that help promote stability. Those are the things that help keep communities safe as well.”

In response to a question from Bria about what it means to be safe in your community, Aswad asked the audience to close their eyes and think about where they feel most safe.

“Is it a garden? Is it at church? Is it with family? Think about where you feel most safe. The majority of us in this room, I don’t think we say more police, or that we feel safe with more prisons. We feel more safe in community with each other. So that’s what we need to invest in, more Trauma Recovery Centers, more mental health programs, more solutions to help stop the cycle. That’s how we actually get to true safety in this country.”

You can watch the full conversation on YouTube.

It has now been just over a year since the U.S. government allotted approximately a billion dollars to roll out a new nationwide phone number, 988, to call when people need help with a mental health crisis or behavioral health support. The goal of the initiative is to divert individuals in crisis to community-based services, including stabilization centers, rather than encounter law enforcement.

Over the past year, my organization has run a bimonthly virtual learning community for criminal justice systems around the country to help them with this transition. Twenty-eight sites involved in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge have attended the meetings focusing on operationalizing the 988 phone lines and associated crisis stabilization centers in their communities.

The mission of the SJC is to lower jail populations in participating communities across the country so the goals of the 988 system are aligned. It is still difficult to empirically measure how many people are staying out of jail because of 988. If someone avoids arrest and is instead diverted to a stabilization center or other community-based service after a 988 call, instead of a 911 call, there is simply no arrest in the public record. Still, the usage of the 988 lines has been promising.

In the first year of implementation, people placed five million calls, chats, and texts to 988 across the country. That’s a 35 percent increase in calls to the federally run suicide prevention line (1-800-273-TALK) it replaced. It includes 665,000 texts, more than a 1,000 percent increase over texts to the old suicide prevention number. By simplifying the process of seeking assistance with a three-digit number, people are more likely to call.

In addition to serving as a Strategic Ally of the Safety and Justice Challenge, I have worked for the past 20 years as a mobile crisis response counselor in Southeast Nebraska. My role has been to assist community members in crisis, whether they are suicidal or homicidal. In the past year, I have seen and heard locally how the 988 number has eased the burden on overstretched law enforcement officers. However, there is now a workforce concern in the behavioral health field. As 988 lines become more successful, communities across America will need to address gaps in the behavioral health system. This is a significant challenge.

Some sites are advanced in their implementation of the 988 number and others are still coming up to speed. More populated states such as California have multiple 988 centers. Others, such as Nebraska, have just one. There are also some concerns about cell tower coordination. For example, if somebody with a Nebraska number calls 988 in California, there is still some concern that their call could route to a center in Nebraska by mistake. That costs time when individuals in crisis face emergencies, but we expect these concerns to be worked out soon.

Meanwhile, three examples of SJC sites and their experiences of implementing the 988 number are as follows:

• In Harris County, Texas, the first-year rollout has gone well. At first, there was some concern about the line being overwhelmed and the volume did increase significantly in the first few months. The staff have now acclimatized, and the system is proving effective.
• In Middlesex County, Massachusetts, stakeholders integrated 988 planning into their existing “Roadmap to Behavioral Health Reform” plan. Over 50 city dispatch centers in Middlesex County were previously surveyed—before the implementation of 988—to gather information on their call codes and who is dispatched for mental health-related calls. Findings demonstrated little consistency across these dispatch centers. There are currently five 988 call centers in Massachusetts, which is more than almost any other state and represents a significant investment in 988.
• In the “Embedding Equity into 988: National Scorecard,” only two states referenced reaching out to older adults. One of those two states is South Dakota. It is noteworthy that only South Dakota and Alaska specified strategies, materials, or efforts to reach older adults through their 988 implementation approaches since older adults are especially vulnerable to suicide or mental health crisis with causes ranging from grief, isolation, to chronic illness. In South Dakota, both Minnehaha and Pennington Counties are part of the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, with the two communities on opposite sides of the state.

Meanwhile, state legislators in more rural areas have shown a lack of knowledge about 988. They will be key allies in securing funding to support ongoing implementation, so it remains important for there to be more conversation and awareness building about the value of 988 as a public safety measure.

While there is clearly a good deal of work remaining across our states and territories until we can consider 988 to be fully implemented, there are positive signs in the first year of 988’s implementation. I expect that together, in the years ahead, we will continue to build on the momentum we have created so far and offer anyone in need of behavioral health supports and/or services an excellent alternative to first dialing 911.

To meaningfully advance racial equity in the criminal legal system, representatives from all components of the justice system, people directly impacted, and partners at the local, state, and federal level have built a National Initiative to Advance Race Equity in the Criminal Legal System.

These stakeholders recognize that administering justice and making communities safer requires authentic community engagement and elevating the voices of people directly impacted by the criminal legal system, especially including justice-involved individuals and their families, victims, and survivors of crime.

A convening of the group was facilitated by persons with lived experience, and the development of this framework represents this authentic engagement and collaboration by representatives of the criminal legal system.

A consensus statement of principles with supporting rationale and background literature has been created to equip federal, state, and local legal system stakeholders to explore and pursue new approaches to building stronger relationships with communities and the broader legal system to advance racial equity and promote community safety and well-being. This document contains a unified statement of principles, policies, and practical guidance to advance racial equity in the criminal legal system, as well as recent real-world examples of policies and practices implemented by a variety of system stakeholders and community organizations throughout the country.

The following principles are the basis for the policy recommendations developed through this collaborative and to inform future resources. They can be adopted at the tribal, local, state, and federal levels in communities throughout the country to meaningfully address the root causes of inequity and strengthen public safety.

Statement of Principles

• The criminal legal system is comprised of justice system stakeholders, including law enforcement, prosecutors, defenders, pretrial services, courts, correctional centers, and community-based corrections (e.g., probation, parole, reentry services), as well as community organizations, public participants (e.g., jurors), and the tribal, local, state, and federal partners that jointly determine individual- and community-level outcomes.
• The purpose of the criminal legal system is to serve the community, including victims, young people with legal system involvement, persons with lived experience in the justice system, and their families through promoting public safety, holding individuals accountable for their actions, administering justice, facilitating the rehabilitation of and reentry to communities of system-involved individuals, and ensuring support services and assistance for victims of crime to seek justice and healing.
• Racial equity is essential for the criminal legal system to achieve these purposes. When the system creates a disparate impact or fails to ensure full access to the benefits of the legal system to any person or community because of race or ethnicity, that system is inequitable. Racial equity in the criminal legal system is realized when all community members are fairly treated by the system in a manner that meets their needs and ensures everyone’s human dignity is acknowledged.
• A broad and comprehensive approach is necessary for the criminal legal system to adequately address the many causes and consequences of racial and ethnic disparities. Coordination across all system and community stakeholders which elevates the perspective of people with lived experiences in the justice system will best recognize the full scope of how the system impacts community outcomes and how best to implement effective and sustainable policies and practices to advance racial equity within systems.
• Authentic community engagement is an essential and often underappreciated component of comprehensive efforts to address racial equity. Authentic engagement that involves community members and persons with lived experience and their families, and victims and survivors in the shaping of system policies and practices, will best achieve desired community outcomes by leveraging the specific expertise and competencies of the community and fostering trust between system stakeholders and community members.

The criminal legal system exists to serve communities, which ultimately bear the outcomes of decisions made by system stakeholders. Thus, community members and persons directly impacted by the criminal legal system must be at the forefront of efforts to advance racial equity in the administration of justice and promotion of community safety. Authentic community engagement requires forging trust between system stakeholders and communities, centering community members in system decision making, and empowering them to act as equal partners in the shaping of policies and practices so that the system can fully meet the needs of communities, treat all persons equitably and with dignity, and realize greater justice, fairness, and safety for all.

This initiative and the convening were made possible through the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge and the efforts of those who volunteered their time and insights to produce the document.