Topic: Jail Populations

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.”

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. 

Located in western Tennessee in the Mississippi Delta, Shelby County has a population of almost one million residents, making it the largest county in the state. Shelby County is implementing several strategies to reduce its jail population safely, including adopting a new pretrial risk assessment tool, undertaking research and data collection on case processing to identify areas that contribute to increased stays in the jail and improving opportunities for release for individuals with behavioral health issues.

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

Shelby County identified three major issues when we first applied for the Safety and Justice Challenge in 2015. The first issue was a budgetary challenge. Over half of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office total budget went towards staffing and operating the jail. We wanted to improve outcomes for justice-involved individuals and to reduce jail operating costs. The second issue was disproportionate minority contact. Shelby County’s total population is 53.1 percent black. However, a 2014 snapshot of the Shelby County jail population found that 87 percent of males and 74 percent of females were black – a result that showed disproportionate minority contact as an ongoing issue. We knew this issue needed to be addressed. We thought that since the Safety and Justice Challenge focused on racial and ethnic disparities, the challenge would be a great fit for our criminal justice reforms. Lastly, we identified limited mental health resources for people who are involved in the justice system. Limited resources or limited access to available resources result in higher rates of incarceration for people suffering from mental illness. This population is often jailed because there is no alternative available.  These individuals will receive treatment and pharmacological services while incarcerated, but sending them to jail is not the right solution. We needed to find a better way to connect these individuals to community resources for treatment.

What are the main drivers of your jail population?

The Shelby County Jail is a pretrial-only facility. The main driver was that the average length of stay was increasing even while jail bookings were down. This trend of increased length of stay began in 2014. Because jail bookings continue to remain at low levels compared to past historical trends, the rising length of stay is what indicated to Shelby County that case processing delays were the main cause of our rising jail population. Specific drivers include a backlog of long-term cases of over 500 days in jail, delays in cases with co-defendants, case backlog in courts that have Special Prosecution Unit dockets and an increase in the case processing time from Held-to-State to arraignment in Criminal Court (Held-to-State refers to those cases that are bound over to the grand jury and reflect mostly felony cases). There are many players involved in Held-to-State cases, including law enforcement, the district attorney and the criminal court clerk, which often leads to longer processing times.

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

Our first strategy is to reduce case processing times for defendants charged with felonies. This includes conducting case processing research with the Justice Management Institute (JMI) to identify areas that contribute to increased stays in the jail. JMI also conducted court observations, had discussions with criminal justice system partners, conducted an interview protocol with several judges and in September facilitated a case processing roundtable using a sample of cases. Through this work, JMI has identified several case processing issues and proposed solutions that will impact the time to disposition and the jail population.  In October 2018, JMI met with executive leadership to present issues identified and to discuss solutions to improve the flow of cases through the criminal justice system. The executive leadership included the sheriff, Shelby County mayor, district attorney general, chief public defender, a criminal court judge, a general sessions judge and representatives from the Memphis Police Department and the Criminal Court clerk office. Using the same stakeholders from the September roundtable, Shelby County also formed a case processing working group that will work in conjunction with the executive leadership to implement the recommendations proposed by JMI to help develop systemic reforms to address case processing delays.

Our second strategy is to develop a uniform indigence screening process to provide earlier assignment of counsel for defendants with felony cases. Early assignment of counsel supports the work of case processing as well, so Shelby County has decided to combine it with the first strategy. We anticipate that cases will get resolved much sooner and Shelby County could see the jail stay for some defendants shorten by one to two weeks.

Our third strategy is to consolidate the court processing and initial trial dates for misdemeanor citations so they occur on one date rather than two. Misdemeanor citations can be issued by law enforcement for certain misdemeanor charges rather than arresting individuals and taking them to jail for minor offenses. Using a phased-in approach for the remainder of the year, the Memphis Police Department and Shelby County Sheriff’s Office will be issuing misdemeanor citations with only one date on them for both processing and their initial court date. The consolidated process will make it simpler for the community by requiring only one trip to the Criminal Justice Complex. This new process is expected to result in a decrease in failure to appear warrants, which will give the General Sessions Court more time to focus on more serious matters.

Our fourth strategy is implementing a validated pretrial risk assessment. We partnered with the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) to have a validation study of our current risk assessment tool done; a tool that has been in use for almost 30 years and had not undergone any type of validation. The outcome of the study was that the tool was not valid. As a result, Pretrial Services decided to adopt the Laura and John Arnold Foundation’s Public Safety Assessment (PSA). Our Safety and Justice site coordinator, JMI, received training from the Arnold Foundation and conducted onsite initial, introductory PSA trainings with various criminal justice agencies in September. We have also developed an implementation team consisting of a cross-section of stakeholders who will work together to develop a decision-making framework in order to make pretrial release decisions based on the outcome of the PSA. The framework recommendation will classify individuals based on their likelihood of returning to court and committing a new offense before trial. It is critical for this strategy to not only focus on implementing new tools, but to include stakeholders in the development process, as well as provide education on how these new processes work.

Our fifth strategy is enhancing early release opportunities for defendants with behavioral health issues. In March 2018, we implemented the Brief Jail Mental Health Screen (BJMHS) at the beginning of the booking process to flag possible behavioral health issues. This was done because there were issues around the sharing of information from the local health assessment done by our jail medical staff with non-medical personnel in Pretrial Services. However, after a site visit from Policy Research, Inc., (PRI) we compared results from the BJMHS and jail medical assessment and saw that, unsurprisingly, the jail medical assessment showed more defendants with possible behavioral health issues. We decided to look into whether the results of the local assessment could be used and shared instead of using the BJMHS at booking.

As part of this strategy, a counselor and a case manager/discharge planner (CM/DP) were hired. The counselor is part of Pretrial Services’ Behavioral Health Unit and will advocate for appropriate release options while the case manager/discharge planner will develop discharge plans that will connect these individuals to treatment in the community with the intention that they will remain stable for longer periods of time. After talking with the jail medical provider, the Health Department determined that the results of the local assessment could be shared with pretrial services because the new CM/DP is a medical professional. We anticipate discontinuing the BJMHS at the end of November 2018. We hope these changes will reduce the amount of time individuals with behavioral health issues spend in jail.

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?

Since the planning stage in 2015, all of Shelby County’s justice stakeholders have been involved including local law enforcement, the jail, General Sessions and Criminal Court judiciary, private and public defense, prosecution, etc. Shelby County has a history of strong collaborative relationships within the criminal justice community. Like many jurisdictions, there never seems to be enough funding to accomplish all of our goals, so our criminal justice community has worked together to make change happen. This collaborative foundation has served us well for the SJC efforts and these relationships have grown and improved through our time in the SJC.

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

In 2016, our criminal justice data system, composed of the court case management and offender management systems, was replaced after five years of planning to create a new and improved data system. The new Integrated Criminal Justice Information System (iCJIS) is intended to enhance data sharing between the two systems. However, the implementation of this system required extensive effort and time from our IT staff.  For our SJC solutions to decrease case processing and the validation of our risk assessment tool, we needed to do data pulls to get baseline measures. However, our county IT teams were still heavily involved in implementing the new system to ensure the daily needs of users were met. For that reason, we contracted with an outside vendor for these two data pulls, which ended up being a long process. We were able to complete the data pulls in early 2018 through that process and were able to make slight modifications in iCJIS so future requests for certain data points would be simpler.

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

Our Misdemeanor Citation Consolidation strategy is running smoothly and all remaining precincts and divisions will be trained on using the new system by January 2019. Based on calculations using resources and expertise from the MacArthur Foundation and JFA, this strategy is expected to have a small direct impact on the jail population (less than 1 percent), but a significant indirect impact on criminal justice stakeholders by freeing up their time for more serious cases.

The Behavioral Health strategy will also have a minimal impact on the overall population, but a significant impact on the recidivism of a small group of defendants that use a large portion of resources including jail beds and staff time. The counselor and case manager/discharge planner are now both on board, so we will begin tracking their results to ensure that this strategy is providing release opportunities by connecting individuals to treatment in the community.

Together with JMI, we have finally completed all the necessary steps leading up to case processing solutions (data analysis and report, interviews, observations, etc.). The first meeting that involved discussing potential solutions was held at the beginning of October and we have a second meeting occurring in early November. This strategy will have the greatest impact on our average daily jail population (21 percent), but is also the most time consuming. We hope to have at least some components of this solution implemented by the end of the year if not sooner.

The Public Safety Assessment is in progress. Inputting the PSA into our case management system for automation is still under review and will affect the timeline. Once in use, this strategy is expected to have a 1 percent impact on the jail population, but we are anticipating that number will be greater as the PSA will create more release opportunities.

NACo would like to thank Chris Floyd, Shelby County’s Criminal Justice Coordinator, and Katy Mack, Shelby County Sheriff’s Office Grants Manager, for speaking with us about their efforts.

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

Twelve new Innovation Fund sites expand the Safety and Justice Challenge Network and bring fresh ideas on how to tackle overincarceration.

Local decisions and dynamics make a significant contribution to America’s high incarceration rates.  Local policing practices, judicial decisions, or crime patterns contribute to the overuse of jails. As a result, millions of people cycle in and out of jails annually, disrupting the lives of many people and families and putting local governments under financial pressure.  To tackle this issue, communities across the country are looking at how they can safely reduce their jail populations, improve their responses to people with behavioral health needs, address racial and ethnic disparities, and reduce correctional costs.

To help find effective solutions and spur innovation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has invested more than $100 million to date to support jurisdictions in undertaking jail reforms through the Safety and Justice Challenge. Within two years, the network of jurisdictions grew to include implementation sites that are working on comprehensive reforms, and Innovation Fund sites that receive seed funding to take risks and test innovative ideas.

Momentum for change is building and early results are promising. For example, in two years Philadelphia has reduced its jail population by  36 percent. East Baton Rouge Parish, LA established the parish’s first pretrial release program to operate from within the jail, which creates an option for some participants with behavioral health needs to avoid custody. In Buncombe County, NC, jail bookings for people with domestic violence charges are down 10 percent in late spring 2018, compared to the same period in 2017.

Today, the network is expanding as we welcome a new cohort of 12 Innovation Fund sites. Administered by the Urban Institute, the Innovation Fund further enhances the reach of the Challenge network as it inspires and supports local innovation, experimentation, and peer learning across the nation. The new cohort broadens the network to a total of 52 jurisdictions, located in 32 states and a rich mix of geographically dispersed urban, suburban, and rural communities.

The new sites deepen current reform efforts by zeroing in on issues such as assisting women coming in and out of jail (Cumberland County, ME), improving connection to care for high utilizers (City of Long Beach, CA) or offering free rides to court hearings (Hennepin County, MN). You can find brief descriptions of the new Innovation Fund sites and the work they’ll be undertaking here. Agencies who spearhead the reforms represent a wide variety of local leaders such as sheriffs, the courts, prosecutors, public defenders, departments of health and human services, city and county administrators, and many others.

The 12 Innovation Fund sites not only expand the reach of the Safety and Justice Challenge network but represent an inspiring array of justice reform efforts to safely reduce jail use.

A version of this post appeared on Urban Wire blog.