Topic: Interagency Collaboration

More Results

From March 2019 to March 2021, over 1,200 individuals awaiting court appearances for felony charges were released through the efforts of the Jail Population Review Committee, either via modified conditions of release and community supervision or to residential housing or treatment. These releases equate to over 42,000 jail days reduced at a cost of $127.20 per bed day, adding up to savings in detention costs and a reduced average daily jail population.

Pima County Superior Court’s Enhanced Supervision program helped save an estimated 4,633 jail bed days for individuals in the first and second quarters of Fiscal Year 2020-2021, through more robust staffing and case management.

Pima County Adult Probation Department released their “Probation Strategy CQI Dashboard” for FY 2020-2021, demonstrating a variety of successes as a result of their strategies. Among those include a significant reduction in the numbers of Petitions to Revoke (PTR) filed. Fewer PTR’s filed result in fewer persons arrested on a probation violation warrant and booked into the county jail. Rather than file a PTR, probation officers work harder to reengage probationers and find solutions to barriers to success.

The county’s data collection and analysis efforts have improved with the placement of additional staff, providing data to the Tucson Police Department, a dedicated Data Coordinator for the Justice Services Department, and the Jail Population Coordinator. For example, the data analyst at the Tucson Police Department helped produce interactive data dashboards on a variety of topics including use of force, reported crimes, arrests, traffic collisions, traffic enforcement, and police activity, which will inform future strategies to improve practices within the justice system.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and due to staffing reductions, the county’s Community Collaborative group fell into a hiatus. The county revived this dynamic group in February 2021 and the focus shifted to seeking out the perspectives and recommendations from members, rather than providing information to members. The Community Collaborative developed an action plan with interrelated areas of work aimed at deepening the county’s connection to the broader community, particularly people who have been historically overrepresented in the justice system.

Remaining Challenges

Pima County is focused on addressing remaining challenges in its local justice system.

While progress has been made, issues of differing database systems, coding systems, and privacy persist, which makes data sharing among the stakeholders challenging.

Enhanced caseloads in Pretrial Services have not made much of a dent in lowering the jail population. The impact of judicial autonomy and decision-making was not factored in considerations of justice reform. When judges are unwilling to consider release recommendations, the best plans for reform can become stalled. Further, if courts do not collect data on judicial decisions, efforts to reduce racial, ethnic, and even income disparities become even more difficult to address.

The pandemic slowed Pima County’s Racial and Ethnic Disparities and Disproportionalities program. At the end of February 2021, the Community Collaborative began meeting monthly and reestablished its Racial Equity Community Action Team, a subcommittee whose purpose is to develop and implement a plan to engage the community through a series of Community Dialogues that will collaborate and coordinate with community organizers, identify gaps, and lead to policy recommendations to the County’s Board of Supervisors.

In order to sustainably support long-term strategies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities and disproportionalities in the justice system, while ensuring community voice and experience is incorporated into all Pima County’s justice reform work, Justice Services has hired a Community Engagement and Equity Specialist. This position, funded with General Funds, will lead the Community Collaborative, future Listening Sessions, and work to incorporate data-driven decision making into trauma-informed policy and programming.

Justice Services also contracted with a Tribal Engagement Specialist (member of the Tohono O’Odham Nation) to lead a series of Listening Sessions with two local tribes. Due to both shutdowns related to the pandemic, as well as cultural stigmas associated with discussing justice system involvement, the sessions struggled to yield results. Pima plans to revisit this strategy once pandemic restrictions are lifted, with future guidance from local experts who can inform a culturally-competent approach.

Last, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on every aspect of the county’s local justice system and continues to uniquely affect those incarcerated in local jails. The foundation of collaborative, data-driven strategies, including the necessary structures and collaboration from local stakeholders that are in place to support these strategies, has set the county up well to respond to the pandemic swiftly and effectively.

More Results

Lake County achieved a modest reduction in their average daily jail population as they began implementing their SJC strategies. The initial planning and implementation work paved the way for a quick system response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020 and sustained efforts into 2021. Since the pandemic began, Lake County has maintained an average monthly ADP around 18% below their baseline.

In order to look outside the system to the community impacts, Lake County partnered with community researchers to conduct preliminary outreach and learn about the issues most important to the community. This initial effort prompted the Lake County Equity Team to look deeper at data to identify potential intervention points in the pretrial phase. The Team decided to explore existing data around failures to appear for court hearings and has partnered with researchers to learn more about the reasons why people don’t appear, in order to identify potential policy and practices changes that best support hearing attendance.

Participation in the Safety and Justice Challenge also increased collaboration and connection between criminal justice system actors and the community in Lake County’s efforts to rethink its justice system.

Lake County recognized it was critical to meet people’s behavioral health needs to help them avoid more system involvement or keep them out of the system entirely. To that end, Lake County worked tirelessly to launch the Living Room Wellness Center and expand the COAST program.

The Wellness Center will be open 24/7 with clinical staff available, many of whom have lived experience with the justice system, and will serve as both a walk-in facility and police-drop off for crisis intervention services. It is an exciting program that centers the justice-involved person and seeks to provide a holistic approach. The COAST program is also expanding to include a peer support specialist who works with the social worker and sheriff’s deputy to provide follow up support after a person has an opioid overdose or is in a mental health crisis and has a law enforcement encounter.

A critical component to the future success of the Wellness Center was crisis intervention team (CIT) training for Sheriff’s deputies. Between 2018 and 2021, 99% of deputies were trained in CIT to best position officers to effectively communicate and de-escalate situations with individuals in crisis.

Remaining Challenges

There are always challenges when implementing system reform efforts and Lake County is focused on meeting the challenges head on. Criminal justice system partners will continue to address concerns about how best to keep the community safe, while valuing every person’s rights and human dignity.

Additionally, while the jail population declined under COVID-19, the pandemic continues to have a significant impact on every aspect of the county’s local justice system and uniquely affects incarcerated people. Through their SJC work, Lake has laid a foundation of collaborative, data-driven strategies, including the necessary internal infrastructure and local stakeholders supportive of the work, and positioned the county to respond to the pandemic swiftly and effectively.

Moving forward, Lake County will continue to emphasize the importance of improving data capacity and transparency to inform future system improvements and implement best practices that reduce the jail population while working towards eliminating systematic racial and ethnic disparities.

More Results

Between 2018 and June 2021, the Pre-Trial Diversion and Recovery Program has conducted 211 assessments, admitted 153 total participants. Of the total participants, 48 have graduated, and only 14.5% have been rearrested. Additionally, the Pre-Trial team has been able to open new modes of communication, establishing a consistent point of contact for resource connection to the District Attorney’s and Public Defender’s Offices, which wasn’t available before the program began.

As a result of the Expedited Arraignment program, the time it takes the District Attorney to bill a case has been reduced from approximately 8 weeks to 10 days, as of January 2020, which has had a direct effect on lowering the average daily population and the average length of stay at the Parish Prison. There has also been a significant decline in Failure to Appear rates since Expedited Arraignment began.

As a result of the new Rapid Case Assessment Team initiative, individuals had a far better chance at resolving the case early or getting a reduced bond at Call Out. In fact, between the launch of the Rapid Case Assessment team (RCAT) in July through December 2020, defendants at Call Out in Baton Rouge City Court had an 83% case resolution rate. In comparison, the case resolution rate of defendants prior to the implementation of RCAT at Call Out was nearly zero.

The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) formed as a nonprofit organization in January 2019. Since then, the CJCC has selected a board of directors which include the heads of all the major justice agencies in EBR, the Mayor-President’s Office, and community organizations. The results of which have led to increased cross-agency communication and collaboration, unified effort towards reforming justice policies and programs, and enhanced conversations regarding disparities within the local justice system.

Remaining Challenges

East Baton Rouge Parish is focused on addressing its remaining challenges in its local justice system.

While East Baton Rouge has seen a significant decrease (47% on average) in the jail population since joining the Safety and Justice Challenge, it has proven more difficult to realize similar success in reducing racial and ethnic disparities. Looking ahead, East Baton Rouge will be focusing more directly on reducing racial and ethnic disparities at critical points in the criminal justice process, using a lens of equity and inclusion.

East Baton Rouge plans to focus on the data from current initiatives to find and correct disparities, while also working in partnership with people who have lived experience in the criminal justice system.

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on every aspect of the parish’s local justice system and continues to uniquely affect those incarcerated in local jails. The foundation of collaborative, data-driven strategies, including the necessary structures and collaboration from local stakeholders that are in place to support these strategies, has set the parish up well to respond to the pandemic swiftly and effectively.

More Results

As a result of effective pretrial strategies, misdemeanor-level average daily jail population has been reduced by over 50% while misdemeanor-level admissions have been reduced by over 60%.

The county has increased supportive services and material supports to justice involved individuals. For example, justice-involved individuals represented by the Office of the Public Defender and requiring a chemical dependency evaluation typically receive one within 10-12 days, with a shorter timeframe for in-custody defendants.

As a result of increased efficiencies in case processing, on average, time from initial appearance in Missoula County Justice Court to arraignment in Missoula County District Court has been reduced by one week.

There is productive collaboration among key stakeholders, including judges, law enforcement, public defenders, community members, and many others, who support the county’s efforts to make the local justice system fairer and more equitable. Key stakeholders are routinely seeking data to inform their understanding of the local justice system, and data is playing an increasingly prominent role in decision-making.

The county has also created deep relationships with individuals, community groups, and elected officials who are engaged in conversations and decision-making related to the local justice system. The creation of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council has also resulted in a significant increase in the participation of community partners in tackling justice system problems.

In the wake of the national protests and reckoning for the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, Missoula community members are increasingly engaged in understanding racial and ethnic disparities present in the judicial system. Their activism led to the Missoula City Council and Missoula County Commissioners to provide critical funding to the development of a Mobile Crisis Unit—a non-law enforcement responder team for people dealing with mental health and substance use related crisis situations.

Remaining Challenges

Missoula County is focused on addressing its remaining challenges in its local justice system.

COVID-19 has highlighted the significant need for supportive services and effective community supervision resources in Missoula County, as it dramatically changed the composition of the jail population and underscored the overrepresentation of Native Americans in the jail. As a result, the county’s strategies have been updated to respond to both long-standing and newly identified challenges.

To address the long-standing and new challenges, Missoula County is moving forward with a number of strategies. These include creating a community-supported release program; expanding the use of court hearing reminders; funding a dually-licensed social worker to conduct chemical dependency and mental health evaluations for Probation and Parole; improving trust in and reliability of the Public Safety Assessment; ensuring conditions of release imposed correspond to the appropriate risk level; improving the pretrial supervision drug testing policy to support success of supervised individuals; funding a Native American Peer Support Specialist within the Office of the Public Defender; creating a dashboard focusing on identifying specific racial and ethnic disparities at key decision points in the justice system; and reviewing and ensuring that criminal justice policies are equitable from paper to practice.

More Results

Specifically, Cook County has been able to reduce the local jail population without putting public safety at risk. In fact, rigorous analysis completed by the Office of the Chief Judge, the JFA Institute, and Loyola University Chicago all demonstrate that eliminating cash bail in the justice system has been both safe and effective in Cook County.

In the first six months after bond reform was implemented in Cook County, more than 3,500 more people received an I-Bond—meaning that they were released without bail—who would not have received one before. Because of I-Bonds and lower D-Bond amounts, defendants saved a total $31.4 million that could instead go toward rent, food, and other essentials to support themselves and their families. In addition, 500 more people were safely released back into the community while awaiting trial.

Community voice was critical to these results. In 2020-2021, the county engaged 264 community residents who participated in 31 small group dialogues, an increase from the 144 community residents who participated in 24 small group dialogues in 2019.

Remaining Challenges

While Cook County has made significant progress in reducing its jail population, the county aims to reduce it even further, and continue addressing the barriers that keep people in jail before their trials begin.

In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a set of completely new challenges for the Cook County justice system, but stakeholders remain firmly committed to driving forward toward the goals of the Safety and Justice Challenge. Through continued collaboration and data-driven decision making, stakeholders regularly review strategies to course-correct and adapt, even during the most challenging of circumstances.

Finally, Governor J.B Pritzker signed the SAFE-T act on February 2, 2021 which has significant implications for Illinois and Cook County. The abolishment of cash bail, law enforcement reforms, and other pretrial reforms are covered in the legislation and county stakeholders will have to collaboratively prepare for the impact of the significant changes.