Topic: Jail Populations

A decade ago, rising prison populations and costs seemed to be an uninterruptable trend. Today, however, many states have seen a decline in the number of individuals under correctional supervision. As states make policy and budgetary changes to move the prison population needle in the other direction, local corrections resources are affected: laws aimed at reducing the prison populations may result in more offenders being supervised in the community and in local jails. As a result, state lawmakers have recently taken steps to help ease the local burden.

Because nearly two-thirds of those in local jails are awaiting trial and have not been convicted of a crime, state pretrial policies can be a valve to safely reduce jail populations. From 2012 to 2014, states enacted 261 laws addressing pretrial policy. An important trend during that time was the adoption of risk-based assessments—tools that help the court identify low-risk defendants that are likely to return to court. Vermont, for example, adopted a law that requires the court to conduct risk assessments on most defendants, including those charged with drug offenses and those unable to post bond after 24 hours. The court must then consider the results when determining conditions of release.

Pretrial diversion programs are often created to filter defendants from the traditional criminal justice process and address specific underlying factors that contribute to criminal behavior. Nearly two-thirds of states since 2012 have made changes to their diversion laws, concentrating on providing options for specialized populations such as people who have been military members, those affected by substance use and addiction disorders, or those with mental health needs.

State-level legislative policies also have significant impact on the convicted population in jails. This population generally includes those serving sentences of less than one year, or for misdemeanors; probation and parole violators; and prison inmates awaiting transfer to a state facility. Last year, when Utah lawmakers lowered many drug possession penalties from felonies to misdemeanors, they also lowered many traffic violations from misdemeanors to non-jailable infractions. The intention was to re-focus jail resources on more serious crime.

Nearly 20 states since 2010 have authorized the use of short jail stays in lieu of returning to prison for people on probation or parole who break the rules of their supervision. Many of these laws limit the amount of time that can be ordered as a jail sanction. To help offset probation and parole supervision costs, at least nine states have put in place “performance incentive funding” mechanisms. These funds reimburse localities for successfully supervising probationers and parolees in the community rather than sending them to prison.

As these examples show, state-level policies that impact the front-end of criminal justice systems can aid national efforts that focus on best practices for use of local jails in a variety of ways.

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is the single bipartisan, national, professional organization that has as its exclusive membership all 7,383 state legislators as well as their staff. NCSL’s unique membership, qualities, and nationwide reputation set it apart as a neutral organizational forum for providing information and training on effective policies and practices. The NCSL Criminal Justice Program has partnered with the Safety and Justice Challenge to involve state lawmakers in national efforts to make local criminal justice systems more effective, cost-effective, fair and risk-based.

Local jails admit nearly 11 million people every year, a number that has almost doubled since 1978. Most people are released within a few days, but being detained can lead to serious consequences: job and housing loss, more punitive sentences, reduced social mobility, future criminal behavior, worsened health, and weakened familial and social bonds. These consequences are severe for those entering jail who are already disadvantaged, whether because of mental illness, substance abuse, poverty, or other factors such as race and gender.

Forming the Innovation Fund

Recognizing these severe effects of jail incarceration, jurisdictions nationwide are rethinking the use of jails and their local justice systems to make communities healthier, fairer, and safer. To further these efforts, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation partnered with the Urban Institute in 2016 to host the Innovation Fund under the Safety and Justice Challenge. The Innovation Fund supported a cohort of 20 jurisdictions to implement bold and innovative ideas to reduce over-incarceration in jails and build capacity for future system change. The Innovation Fund demonstrated that small seed funding can achieve outsized impact for jail reform in diverse communities nationwide.

With $50,000 grants each, technical assistance from Urban Institute, and a peer learning network, Innovation Fund sites transformed their use of jails by shifting away from presumption of detention, increasing local capacity to understand their jail population, and expanding reform to traditionally overlooked populations.

Supporting alternatives to jail

Many Innovation Fund sites focused their efforts on supporting alternatives to jail and shifting away from presumption of detention. For instance, the Akron County Prosecutor’s Office implemented a felony summons initiative throughout Summit County, OH for people charged with non-violent, low-level felony offenses. Focusing on felonies generated concern locally, but the Akron Prosecutor’s Office secured leadership buy-in and trained over 4,000 officers in 10 agencies. To date, the county has issued over 700 summons. Polk County, IA used the opportunity to train officers in the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model; training increased rates of police drop-offs to crisis observation centers rather than the county jail or local hospital. Lastly, three jurisdictions used the Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) to better understand their criminal justice and mental health systems, and identify opportunities to safely divert people with behavioral health issues from needless involvement in the criminal justice system.

Understanding the jail population

Jurisdictions also transformed their use of jails by increasing local capacity to understand their jail population and overall justice system. Allegheny County, PA and San Francisco, CA tackled their data systems by building powerful data dashboards and analytic tools to monitor key points and influence decision-making. Campbell County, TN implemented the Service Planning Instrument for Women (SPIn-W), a gender-responsive assessment and case planning tool. Data from the SPIn-W allowed key stakeholders to better understand the needs and risk factors of women in their local jail, and make data-driven decisions on referrals for clients to services and programming.

Expanding jail reform to overlooked populations

Some jurisdictions expanded their jail reform efforts to populations often overlooked in justice system interventions. Buncombe County, NC developed and piloted an intimate partner violence (IPV) pretrial supervision protocol and deployed the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) for people with IPV charges on pretrial status. The county has seen jail bookings for people with IPV offenses drop by 10%. Missoula County, MT conducted interviews with incarcerated Native Americans to learn about cultural identity during detention and implemented culturally-specific programming in the jail. Recommendations from data collection have influenced strategic conversations about jail programming and reentry for Native Americans countywide.

Even with small seed funding, the Innovation Fund spurred meaningful change on justice system practices in 20 distinct communities and built a sustainable community of innovators over a year and a half, with impacts that continue to grow. We are excited to see what our sites will do next.

Bringing about change in criminal justice systems takes the concerted effort of all system actors. Such an ambitious undertaking can be greatly facilitated by charging a coordinating body with opening lines of communication, building collaborative interagency relationships, and creating a shared vision and blueprint for meaningful reform. A criminal justice coordinating council (CJCC) is the general term used to describe such bodies. CJCCs are comprised of elected and appointed senior justice system leaders who convene on a regular basis to coordinate systemic responses to justice problems. They also often serve as an effective means to reduce duplication of effort and conflicting practices and improve how local jurisdictions allocate limited justice system resources.

CJCCs began emerging as early as the 1970s to help forge systemic responses to specific problems facing local jurisdictions. Since then, jurisdictions all over the country have either created CJCCs because of jail population issues directly or have made jail population a major focus of their work through establishing a dedicated subcommittee. While jail overcrowding seems like a very specific problem to solve and then move on from, it is actually a systemic condition that needs continual consideration. As the National Institute of Corrections’ former director Morris Thigpen stated in a seminal publication on CJCCs, “[W]hat a community was treating as solely a ‘jail problem’ was, instead, a system wide condition requiring an intergovernmental and interagency response.”

A few examples from across the nation illustrate the impact that a CJCC can have on jail population over time:

In Jefferson County, Kentucky (Louisville), a local commission has been working on jail crowding issues since the 1980s. Because of its early efforts and decision to focus on alternative programs instead of jail expansion, the commission was able to delay adding jail beds, reduce the total population, and implement a number of successful programs over the years. These programs include the creation and expansion of electronic monitoring including GPS, a day reporting center, a Misdemeanant Intensive Probation Program, screening and post-booking diversion programs targeting individuals with serious and persistent mental illness, problem-solving courts, pretrial supervision, and initiatives to expedite case processing.

Clinton County, Iowa originally formed the Clinton County Justice Coordinating Commission (CCJCC) in response to jail overcrowding, with the goal to better manage the jail population and improve data collection and analysis. Although its efforts did not eliminate the need for a new jail, the CCJCC was able to substantially reduce the associated cost. A needs assessment found that Clinton County saved millions of dollars in avoided construction costs and even more in reduced operational costs because they were able to build a jail with 22 percent fewer beds.  According to Clinton County Sheriff Rick Lincoln, they were able to achieve this because they “identified the offender population that we are just mad at but who aren’t dangerous to society,” such as “those individuals that have been convicted of a misdemeanor type of crime without a victim, such as public intoxication.” He also explained that they are no longer using jail beds for reasons such as non-payment of fines.

Denver, Colorado reduced its jail population by more than 500 people per day since 2009, due in large part to the efforts of the Crime Prevention and Control Commission. The commission’s many initiatives—such as drug court, sobriety court, a jail diversion program, reentry program, and increased use of pretrial supervision—were born of its hard work providing the data to show what was needed; designing and fundraising for the programs; and ongoing quality control and evaluation of the impact of their programs.

In Eau Claire County, Wisconsin, the CJCC is dedicated to the development of multidisciplinary strategies to prevent jail overcrowding and improve criminal justice system effectiveness.  Through initiatives started within the CJCC, such as the implementation of their pre-charge diversion program and the National Institute of Corrections’ Evidence-Based Decision-Making initiative, jail is imposed as a condition of probation only as a last resort. Also, because of another CJCC initiative—the Community Transition Center (CTC)—Eau Claire County saved more than 17,000 jail bed days in 2014 and has had a significant impact on recidivism rates, with less than 30% of offenders who were sentenced to the CTC receiving new criminal charges within one year of successfully completing programming.

What is it about a CJCC that makes these examples of change possible?  While not all CJCCs are alike—nor should they be—they can each provide a foundation for partnerships in the criminal justice system and help to inspire communication, cooperation, and a collaborative effort towards system improvement.  To learn more about the factors that create local justice systems that prioritize the improvement of administrating justice, we analyzed eight counties that have been cited as having “highly effective” local justice systems in a new report, From Silo to System: What Makes a Criminal Justice System Operate Like a System?. We found that among the successful systems, a culture of collaboration was one of the main characteristics they shared. From a foundation of collaboration, lasting systemwide change is within reach.

More information and resources on CJCCs can be found on the National Network of Criminal Justice Coordinating Councils’ website.