Topic: Interagency Collaboration

It’s been two years since the United States began to shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19. As we continue in our mission to reduce jail populations across the United States, the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) asked some of our strategic allies to reflect on lessons learned from the pandemic.

Systems Adapted to Release More People and Take on New Challenges

Criminal justice systems across the country adapted to keep people safe. “They worked in partnership to reduce arrests and bookings, and they increased releases,” said Wendy Ware, vice president of the JFA Institute. Some jurisdictions made changes to their bail protocols. Others relied on technology to keep operating. Where possible, they also focused on behavioral health to improve reentry success.

But COVID-19 also further exposed racial inequities in jails across the country. “In many cases, we saw racial disparities increase across participating cities and counties as a larger percentage of White people were released from jail than Black people,” Wendy said. You can read Wendy’s December 2020 blog, “Five Things COVID-19 Taught Us About Safety and Justice.”

“The pandemic exposed and exacerbated existing inefficiencies and inequities in the justice system,” said Marc Levin, Chief Policy Counsel at the Council on Criminal Justice. “But it also inspired innovations such as remote check-ins for people under supervision that should remain a component of the system as we enter a ‘new normal.’”

Marc said it is now a critical task to deliver on the constitutional promise of a speedy trial. There have been “staggering delays stemming from court closures in systems that were already backlogged to some extent before COVID-19,” he said. Fortunately, “many SJC sites are leading the way in addressing this,” he said. “For instance, by diverting trivial cases, such as those involving warrants for unpaid fines and fees and low-level drug possession, as well as investing in holistic indigent defense so more individuals can be connected with treatment resources, mediation, and other off-ramps earlier in the process.”

Racial Disparities Persisted

Christopher James is a Racial Justice & Well-Being Associate with a Specialization in Criminal Justice at the W. Haywood Burns Institute. He also saw racial and ethnic disparities persist despite policy and practice changes during COVID-19, which led to overall population reductions. “This could mean that Black and Latinx populations which have been most susceptible to COVID-19 due to healthcare disparities have needs that are not sufficiently met by system changes,” he said. “In addition to that, many changes, such as allowing for hearings via Zoom or changes to the bond schedule, are being rolled back, and we must fight to show that these types of changes should remain to make the system and its processes more equitable for everyone.”

Christopher said legal systems were all capable of making many of the changes that took place during COVID-19. But it took the pandemic crisis to make them happen. He wants to keep the pressure up to keep valuable changes in place. “We must continue to hold systems accountable to keep these changes and not to wait until another crisis to begin thinking differently about what accountability can look like outside of secure custody,” he said.

“The arrival of the COVID-19 has only exposed the systemic inequities and racism in this country’s incarceration and detention policies,” said Ronald Simpson-Bey Executive Vice President, JustLeadershipUSA. “Even before the nation’s correctional facilities showed COVID-19 infection rates more than 150 times higher than the general population, correctional facilities were in a state of crisis.”

COVID-19 revealed prisons had “no real plan to deal with the outbreak,” Ronald said. In fact, most prisons do not have plans in place to deal with any kind of emergency. At the height of the crisis, Ronald wrote a blog about why jails need better emergency planning. Policymakers’ gross lack of foresight, care, and attention to protect people in prison and jails during this crisis, and all the ones that have preceded it, is reprehensible,” Ronald said. “The refusal to save the lives of the people behind bars, disproportionately Black and Brown, reflects the idea that these people are disposable.”

Ronald points out that people in jails and prisons are our mothers, fathers, teachers, and community members. They are human beings and their lives matter. Policymakers have fallen behind the curve, relying on “arbitrary standards” to release people and leave them waiting too long for release even when plans are in place, Ronald said.

Reframing Jail Populations as A Public Health Issue

“COVID-19 only affirmed a rapid need to decarcerate,” said Evie Lopoo, Project Manager at The Square One Project at Columbia University.  She added that the rapid spread of the virus in jails and surrounding communities showed the “profound” connection between the health of people in jails and prisons and the health of entire communities. “Reducing jail and prison populations is a matter of public health and should be framed as such,” she said.

County and City Governments Found a New Role in Making Change

“County governments have served on the front lines of the nation’s response to the pandemic,” said Larry Johnson, President of the National Association of Counties. Larry is also a County Commissioner in DeKalb County, Georgia. He said counties have been using new resources from the American Rescue Plan to shape their response. “We are investing in building healthier, safer counties where all our residents have opportunities to thrive,” he said. That means pursuing innovative practices with community partners to reduce the misuse and overuse of jails. It also means “improving outcomes for individuals involved in the justice system, especially residents with behavioral health conditions,” Larry said.

Kirby Gaherty is a Program Manager for Justice Initiatives at the Institute for Youth, Education and Families at the National League of Cities. The pandemic has meant “a lot of long days for the team at NLC,” she said. “We are happy to now see, after months of advocacy from members of the team, that cities are taking advantage of the American Rescue Plan to invest in much needed justice transformation projects like violence prevention strategies, alternative response models and more, in addition to other important investments.”

Kirby also said that much of her organization’s justice and public safety work shifted after the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent demonstrations. “While manifesting out of tragedy, the results were a much-needed refresh for our Justice Initiatives team here at NLC,” she said. “Our work with Mayors and Councilmembers across the country via the the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force resulted in two strong reports that we hope to advance through our SJC network and beyond. Unfortunately, narratives around violence and crime throw somewhat of a wrench in that work. But we are still hopeful to see cities make the changes that they committed to back in 2020.”

Moving Beyond What We Have Always Done

Kirby said the pandemic offered new perspectives for many people working on justice reform. It provoked a “new intentionality” around the work, she said. “It is unfortunate that it took a global pandemic slowing us down to get here,” she said. “But the results brought a stronger connection with local and national partners, more intentional engagement of people with lived experience and members of the community, and the ability to move beyond what we have always done.”

Recognizing that too many people spend too much time in jails across America when their deeper need is for behavioral health treatment, counties are deploying innovative programs to help address this problem. To better support community members living with a behavioral health condition such as mental illness and/or substance use disorders, many counties are developing and implementing integrated behavioral health continuums of care.

Building an effective behavioral health care continuum targets the root causes of behavioral health emergencies by investing in comprehensive and accessible prevention, treatment, and real-time intervention. With almost one in four adults in the United States living with a behavioral health condition, county leaders understand the urgency to find approaches that balance community behavioral health needs and law enforcement response during an emergency.

The continuum of care helps people before, during, and after a behavioral health emergency by prioritizing a public health and person-centered approach. This reduces the overreliance on emergency rooms and the criminal legal system as de facto mental health providers.

The National Association of Counties is exploring the challenges and opportunities related to the behavioral health continuum of care in partnership with the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC). This year we are producing a series of webinars and reports outlining the important work counties are undertaking in this space.

The first webinar in January focused on helping people before and after an emergency. Representatives from Orange County, NY, Johnson County, IA, and Hennepin County, MN discussed ways to assist people in the community through coordinated and wraparound services that often address social determinants of health. One panelist was Leah Kaiser, Director of Behavioral Health and Justice Strategy in Hennepin County—a community participating in SJC.

“Hennepin County includes Minneapolis. The impact of George Floyd in 2020 dramatically impacted our partnerships with law enforcement, with community providers, and with our communities,” Kaiser said. “We are really starting to reap the rewards that come from breaking down siloes to meet people’s needs.”

Kaiser discussed “intercept zero” of the sequential intercept model (SIM). The SIM details how people with behavioral health conditions come into contact with and move through the criminal legal system. Kaiser showed how practices such as care coordination, peer support and connections, and referrals to social services can help to address the underlying drivers of behavioral health conditions. It means deflecting people away from intercept one – when law enforcement or emergency services providers often respond to residents experiencing a behavioral health emergency.

“In our system redesign we’ve been centered on ‘what has been their experience when residents have a mental health emergency?’” Kaiser said. “Today, residents encounter a person, or multiple people, who do not have the right training and can do very little to help them resolve their crisis. The mismatch between training, response, and need is costly to both residents and the system at large. The result puts people on a path of repeated traumatic exposure, overuse of inappropriate interventions, and poor health outcomes.”

The system redesign in Hennepin County involved people from across the community, Kaiser said.

People facing a behavioral health emergency often have socioeconomic, health, and emotional needs across systems and are best served when those systems work together. That is why a recovery-oriented and cross-systems approach can stabilize a person in distress and equip them with the tools to effectively mitigate a future need before it turns into an emergency.

With differing needs, counties may prioritize pieces of the continuum but can best serve residents by supporting them throughout each step of their behavioral health condition. It is important to support community members during an emergency by providing them with someone to talk with, someone to respond, and somewhere to go—a framework created by SAMHSA—but services before and after are critical too. No one element of the continuum alone will resolve a problem.

The next webinar on February 22 will highlight counties that are using federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to support the behavioral health needs of their residents. Many counties are dedicating federal resources to programs and practices such as stabilization centers or providing mental health services in libraries and recreation centers. Counties are also deploying ARPA funds towards justice and public safety efforts.

As part of the SJC, NACo supports a dozen counties through the County Justice Peer Learning Network. Over the past two years, these counties have developed action plans and implemented practices to reduce the number of individuals living with a behavioral health condition in jails. They are bolstering their behavioral health continuums of care by increasing coordination across agencies and programs (Whatcom County, WA), launching a crisis triage center (Douglas County, KS), deploying a pilot mobile response unit pairing a paramedic and mental health worker (Dane County, WI), and expanding mental health diversion in the court system (Durham County, NC), among other accomplishments.

The future looks rich for a deeper discussion about behavioral health continuums of care. It should involve the right people in getting the right outcomes and keeping people out of jails who would be better served by treatment and support in the community.

The last two years have been turbulent for all our partners in the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), particularly for the cities and counties that have committed to reducing their jail population and eliminating racial and ethnic inequities as part of the SJC Network.

Communities participating in SJC range from the small (Missoula, MT) to the immense (Los Angeles, CA), and they vary demographically, politically, geographically, and in every other way you can imagine. But the COVID-19 pandemic touched all of them. It brought with it death and economic disruption, as it has everywhere. It also brought change and opportunity. By forcing local systems to adopt emergency measures to save lives—including suspending or discarding the routines, institutional habits, and assumptions that make jail incarceration so common—the pandemic experience has imparted valuable lessons.

The most obvious lesson, and perhaps the most important, is that we can do without incarceration, to a degree that many had not foreseen. All the cities and counties involved in the SJC reduced their jail populations during the pandemic, some quite dramatically. They got average jail populations down to the lowest levels in decades, and quickly, without endangering the public.

They achieved this largely through collaboration and using data in real-time to understand who is arrested and booked into jail. Local criminal justice systems are fragmented, and lots of agencies working independently play a part in filling jails. With strategies to reduce jail populations already underway and key decision-makers already working together, SJC communities were better positioned than most to respond to the crisis. Even before the pandemic, for example, there were more than a dozen multi-agency “jail population review” teams in place across the SJC Network, tasked with routinely looking at jail data and court records to identify people in custody who could be safely released. Adapting structures like this for COVID-19 purposes—using them to identify medically vulnerable people, say, or all people in jail charged with misdemeanors—was relatively easy.

Many cities and counties participating in SJC have also broadened their collaborations in ways that benefited them when the crisis hit. They were already working with public health officials and other agencies outside the criminal justice system; community advocates and representatives; and people who were directly impacted by the criminal justice system—all of whose cooperation, perspectives, and expertise were needed to cope with the pandemic.

In order to get and keep people out of jail facilities, where social distancing was difficult or impossible, and the danger of outbreaks was high, cities and counties participating in SJC used a variety of techniques. Police reduced or eliminated arrests for offenses like drug possession, sometimes issuing citations instead. Courts released individuals being held on low cash bail amounts or discarded cash bail altogether. Pretrial release and community supervision were expanded to include people charged with more serious offenses. Old warrants were quashed, and new ones were not ordered. And many of the people who were released got the support they needed—housing, food, medication, transportation, and service referrals—to remain in their communities.

Technology also helped. Many cities and counties used video conferencing for hearings to clear up cases while minimizing interactions. Probation and parole departments instituted online check-ins, helping to reduce revocations that often lead to jailing. Many of these practices, though intended to be temporary, are still in place, and many SJC communities are discussing ways of making them permanent.

Not all the news is good. Despite the overall reductions in jail populations, the racial disparities that preceded the pandemic have persisted. There are fewer people in jails, reducing the harm caused by incarceration, but among those who are in jails, people of color are still overrepresented. This has occurred even as the SJC has centered racial equity in its approach, committed to authentic community engagement, and focused on identifying and eliminating the drivers of racial and ethnic inequities.

Also left behind, for the most part, are people accused or convicted of violent felonies—a very large proportion of the incarcerated population, and one that cannot be ignored if we really mean to end mass incarceration.

At the same time, there are broad threats to the sustainability of the progress our partners have made, as well as the stability of the coalitions that achieved them. One of them is the perception that criminal justice reform generally, and pretrial detention reform specifically, have led to increases in crime, including the disturbing spikes in homicides many U.S. cities have witnessed in the past two years. We have good evidence to the contrary—including an analysis showing that no crime increases accompanied substantial jail population reductions in SJC communities during the initiative’s first two years; a more recent study drawing similar conclusions with regard to the even larger jail population cuts during the pandemic; and an assessment focusing on Cook County, which found no increase in criminal activity following bail reform there. Nevertheless, we think it would be a mistake to underestimate the potency of law and order rhetoric equating safety with punishment, which is what brought us mass incarceration in the first place.

All of which is to say, we still have work to do. It is, once again, a reminder that it is not enough to simply adopt best practices to reduce the jail population. Even amid crisis, careful attention must be paid to the racial disparities and working towards true equity. We look forward to what we can accomplish together in the next year.

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For years we have witnessed an increase in the number law enforcement interactions with individuals in the community with unaddressed behavioral health challenges. Conversely, there remain far too few alternatives to unnecessary arrest or transport to the emergency department.

Middlesex County, in Eastern Massachusetts, is New England’s most populous county. Our criminal justice and behavioral health leaders recognized the need improve capacity and access to behavioral healthcare in the community. In 2018, the Massachusetts legislature created the Middlesex County Restoration Center Commission to develop a pilot that would help solve the “divert-to-what?” question. In Middlesex County, the sheriff’s office offers evidence-based programing and treatment for incarcerated individuals, but individuals should not have to go to jail to receive the services they need.

We are grateful to have recently been invited to join the Safety and Justice Challenge’s new IMPACT behavioral health cohort, to share some of the lessons we have learned, and learn from our partner jurisdictions in this impressive network. The Commission has just entered its fourth year of work, and our path forward will be made easier through this tremendous peer exchange opportunity.

One of the biggest lessons we have learned, and hope to pass along to our partner jurisdictions, is the importance of improving collaboration and communication across siloed fields like public safety and behavioral health. All too often, addressing behavioral health needs of the community remains in traditional agency siloes. From the sheriff’s office to mental health service providers and police departments to peer and advocacy organizations, it is only this kind of collaboration that is able to stop people from falling through the cracks.

Middlesex County has 1.6 million people with 54 different police departments spread across urban, suburban, and rural areas. We are fortunate to have the progressive leadership of our police chiefs focused on diverting individuals away from the criminal justice system and into treatment. Similarly, we are fortunate to have a health and human services community poised to step up to increase outreach and engagement, to partner with public safety, and to provide appropriate assessment, treatment, stabilization, and support services to affected individuals.

In an effort to shift the responsibility back to the behavioral health community, we knew it was necessary to develop a model that knit together services in a way that made them easily accessible to both the public and local law enforcement. We wanted to move away from the traditional model of stabilization and release from the emergency department. The Restoration Center will offer both stabilization as well as a comprehensive assessment to inform referral to treatment so the needs of individuals can be appropriately met. Our goal is not only to stop the cycle of unnecessary incarceration but also to help individuals stay healthy enough that they do not have to return to the center.

After years of planning and implementation our goal is to launch a pilot Restoration Center in 2022. We believe we are well positioned to launch the model we have developed in large part due to our commitment to the cross-sector planning process which started with identifying gaps in the delivery of behavioral healthcare, a cost-benefit analysis, and interviews with individuals with lived experience. Through our state legislature, we were successful in securing initial funding as well as a trust fund that will allow the Commission to accept third-party funding.

Now that the Commission’s 2022 budget includes $1 million in funding for the pilot – endorsed by a recent editorial in the Boston Globe, we can begin our work of identifying a provider. We continue to pursue additional funding to ensure that we can implement a full range of services identified as critical to the success of individuals who might otherwise be arrested or hospitalized.

The center will provide behavioral health services to individuals in mental health or substance use crisis. These services will help support ongoing law enforcement efforts across the county to divert individuals with behavioral health conditions from arrest or unnecessary hospitalization.

Local law enforcement and corrections have shouldered this burden for far too long, with over 70 percent of people in our Middlesex Jail & House of Correction having an open mental health case and 80 percent have a history of substance use.  Each and every one of these individuals receives treatment while incarcerated, but these are services that people should be able to access in the community. Our hope is that the Restoration Center will help stop the cycle of unnecessary incarceration.

We attribute a lot of the success of the Middlesex County Restoration Center Commission to the commitment of our diverse stakeholder group. It is not common to have a sheriff co-chair a legislative commission with the president of a mental health advocacy group. It is also unusual to get representatives of the 80 largest behavioral health providers at the county, police chiefs, the chief administrative justice of the trial court, and key state legislators at that table. And sustaining the focus on a challenging goal for over three years is the rarest thing of all. But that is what it takes.

Unfortunately, political will is often the hardest thing to secure. But we owe it to the people falling through the cracks to get it right.

Historically and up to today, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, and people residing in neighborhoods of historic divestment, are more likely to be harmed by public safety systems.

To truly reimagine public safety, cities must acknowledge these harms and take actionable steps, alongside their residents, toward transformation. In 2020 the names of people lost to police violence became synonymous with the movement toward justice. These tragic losses prompted a long overdue conversation with local leaders. They realized they could no longer treat public safety as solely a function of law enforcement.

The recent upticks in violent crime in many cities, despite low crime rates overall, reinforce the importance of city leaders having guidance and support as they think differently about public safety. Losing momentum toward transformation could lead cities back toward strictly enforcement and punishment-based levers for safety.

In this context, the National League of Cities Reimagining Public Safety Task Force held meetings and listening sessions hoping to collectively set a new vision for what it means to keep residents safe. Meeting from February to August of 2021, Mayors and Councilmembers from more than 20 cities, alongside national partners and community stakeholders, developed five high-level recommendations that support the movement toward safety for everyone.

Through collaboration with their peers, national organizations, and most importantly, their communities, elected officials can innovate and replicate policies and initiatives using these recommendations as a guide. Within each recommendation there is a strong focus on both moving away from policing as the only option and on centering the equitable engagement and involvement of residents in every step of the process.

Captured in the report “A Path Toward Safe & Equitable Cities”, the recommendations provide an initial framework for city action:

1. Direct municipal government leadership toward providing safety and well-being for all. This recommendation guides local leaders towards broader definitions of safety and new ways to measure what it is that makes people feel safe. A focus on wellbeing and public health leads cities toward expansive safety visions.
2. Balance the respective roles of government agencies, residents, and partners. Non-traditional stakeholders need to be involved in safety conversations, planning, and budgeting. Specifically, this inclusion centers members of the community who are often left out but most impacted by the harms of current systems.
3. Significantly expand the use of civilian-led and community-based well-being and prevention-focused strategies. Building on the momentum around community responder models and the amplification of credible messengers as key for any safety plan, this recommendation highlights public health response options to both crisis and violence.
4. Embrace full and transparent oversight and accountability for law enforcement. While the report does not center law enforcement in reimagining public safety, it is important for cities leaders to recognize and embrace their role in the oversight of their local police force. Accountability and transparency matter.
5. Seek guidance and support from peers and experts with the assistance of the National League of Cities. Local elected officials face scrutiny daily. In 2020, they also faced both a global pandemic and a reckoning around policing. Support from their peers and access to other resources is necessary as they take a journey toward community centered safety.

During NLC’s annual City Summit in November 2021, a Municipal Toolkit was released to dig deeper into what cities are doing and can do to bring these recommendations to life. The toolkit takes each recommendation and explains it in depth, draws out local examples where it has worked, and describes what implementing policies and initiatives could look like in communities across the country.

NLC, and the Task Force, recognizes that no city has this figured out completely and that much of what we have seen thus far has been smaller in scale and less equitable than we would like. However, by taking these steps, evaluating them, enhancing them and taking them to scale, transformation is possible. In addition, the American Rescue Plan offers an opportunity for cities to invest in ways not possible before. Not all cities are the same and not every city leader will act in the same way. But, through collaboration with residents, local stakeholders, and national partners, we can move from harm to wellness.

“We are talking about wellness. We are talking about holistic health in our communities. That is what public safety is all about—not just the absence of violence—but the presence of wellness,” said Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark, New Jersey. “We need more than the police department to create wellness. Public safety has to be expanded and put in the hands of other folks.”