Topic: Racial and Ethnic Disparities

Research Report

Courts Racial and Ethnic Disparities Reentry April 24, 2026

Seeding Systemwide Jail Reform

In this report we present key lessons learned from the Innovation Fund and its contribution to the overall change legacy of the SJC.

In 2015, the MacArthur Foundation launched the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a 10-year investment initiative that created a network of local jurisdictions across the country committed to rethinking how they use local jails. As part of this effort, the MacArthur Foundation partnered with the Urban Institute to create the Innovation Fund to expand the SJC Network, providing 32 participating jurisdictions with the opportunity to test innovative ideas for safely reducing their jail populations while maintaining or enhancing public safety. In this report we present key lessons learned from the Innovation Fund and its contribution to the overall change legacy of the SJC.

Why This Matters

When the SJC was launched, the United States was facing a worsening crisis in its criminal legal system. The jail population had more than tripled from 158,394 in 1978 to 744,600 in 2014, and millions of people were cycling through local jails each year. During that period, the average length of stay in local jails more than doubled, from 9 to 23 days. There were also stark racial and ethnic disparities: Black people were incarcerated in jails at more than three and a half times the rate of white people, and Indigenous people at more than twice the rate of white people. Jails were driving a major but largely overlooked part of the mass-incarceration crisis. The SJC emerged to fill this gap by mobilizing local partners to confront this challenge directly.

Key Takeaways

The Innovation Fund demonstrated how even modest grant awards, paired with specialized technical assistance and access to a network of jurisdictions committed to jail reform, can drive meaningful change in local criminal legal systems.

The Innovation Fund advanced the change legacy of the SJC by

• designing and implementing new programs and interventions to address jail use,
• increasing stakeholder collaboration within and beyond the criminal legal system,
• enhancing data capacity,
• changing the culture around jail reform, and
• reducing jail populations.

Most Innovation Fund sites continued their projects several years after receiving the MacArthur Foundation’s initial grant and expanded their projects to address other aspects of local jail reform. In addition, many sites continued to actively participate in the SJC Network well beyond their initial grant period, underscoring the value of ongoing peer-learning opportunities and support.

Common implementation challenges sites experienced included

• cross-agency collaboration among local criminal legal system partners,
• securing buy-in from stakeholders and community members,
• staffing shortages and frequent turnover,
• disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and
• identifying and sustaining long-term funding for their Innovation Fund projects.

How We Did It

To inform this report, Urban researchers conducted semistructured interviews with 40 Innovation Fund stakeholders from 25 sites; reviewed relevant materials, such as SJC progress reports and publicly available documents; and analyzed jail population data from the Vera Institute of Justice’s Incarceration Trends dataset. We analyzed transcripts and notes from the interviews using NVivo qualitative analysis software, applying a codebook developed to identify themes related to sites’ implementation of Innovation Fund projects, their involvement in the SJC Network, and the broader local criminal legal reform landscape.

• 
• 
• 

Research Report

Incarceration Trends Pretrial Racial and Ethnic Disparities February 26, 2026

Criminal Case Processing Reforms in Harris County, Texas

Jail incarceration is a significant part of the United States’ uniquely high incarceration rates, and the harms of jail incarceration are numerous and significant. Harris County, Texas, with support from the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC)—an initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reduce overincarceration and disparities in jail populations—enacted various case processing changes to reduce the local jail population awaiting trial. This case study explores the use and impact of those strategies.

Why This Matters

High levels of jail incarceration impose substantial costs on jurisdictions, requiring greater resources with potentially limited impact on public safety. Jail incarceration also places a great deal of strain on the people incarcerated, who may be at high risk of being victimized while incarcerated, have lower wages after their release, and experience worse mental health and substance use issues. People in jail pretrial make up a large part of the jail population, and case processing time contributes to pretrial incarceration’s impact.

What We Found

Harris County employed three strategies to reduce case processing time: use of scheduling orders, more efficient evidence gathering, and the introduction of the Responsive Interventions for Change (RIC) docket. Stakeholders in Harris County viewed these strategies as successful but also noted that each came with inherent challenges.

How We Did It

We relied on three primary data sources for this case study: 11 semistructured interviews with Harris County stakeholders, analysis of materials and documentation provided by stakeholders, and analysis of jail population data collected from SJC sites by the Institute for State and Local Governance. Interviews were analyzed using NVivo qualitative analysis software. We used thematic analysis of stakeholders’ responses to identify trends using a codebook developed for this case study.

• 
• 
• 

Issue Brief

Crime Data Analysis Incarceration Trends Racial and Ethnic Disparities January 14, 2026

Research Brief: The Impact of Jail Reduction Strategies on Community Safety: Findings from Two Safety & Justice Challenge Sites

This study examined whether the jail reduction strategies implemented in two SJC sites reduced jail populations without increasing crime or sacrificing community safety. Findings suggest that incarceration can be avoided without negatively impacting public safety, with recidivism rates declining after SJC implementation. Further, less time in jail resulted in greater public safety; shorter jail stays were associated with lower recidivism risk.

• 
• 
• 

Research Report

Crime Data Analysis Incarceration Trends Racial and Ethnic Disparities January 14, 2026

The Impact of Jail Reduction Strategies on Community Safety: Findings from Two Safety & Justice Challenge Sites

This study examined whether the jail reduction strategies implemented in two SJC sites reduced jail populations without increasing crime or sacrificing community safety. Findings suggest that incarceration can be avoided without negatively impacting public safety, with recidivism rates declining after SJC implementation. Further, less time in jail resulted in greater public safety; shorter jail stays were associated with lower recidivism risk.

• 
• 
• 

Research Report

Crime Racial and Ethnic Disparities February 8, 2024

Redefining Community Safety in Missoula, Montana

Lee Ann Slocum, Claire Greene, Beth M. Huebner, Kiley Bednar, Adriano Udani, Robert Boxerman, Sarah Kirk, Konstadina Spanoudakis, Hayden Steingruby, Elizabeth Lyne, Emelyne Lane

Everyone wants to feel safe in their community. Yet, little is known about how people make sense of what community safety looks and feels like to them. Discussions among policymakers and in the media often emphasize crime rates as a key measure of community safety and the criminal legal system as the primary means of achieving this goal. This traditional conceptualization has several negative consequences. First, it often overlooks the perspectives and experiences of people most impacted by violence, high levels of enforcement, and mass incarceration, many of whom are people of color. Second, low crime rates do not necessarily ensure that residents perceive their community is safe. Other factors, such as media coverage and the physical and social environment, also play a role in shaping views of safety. Moreover, not all crime is reported to authorities, and this may be particularly true in areas where residents experience elevated levels of police enforcement activity and have little trust in the police. Third, relying on crime and other criminal legal system data can provide a narrow and skewed conceptualization of safety because they tend to reflect law enforcement priorities, police discretion, and willingness to report crime. Finally, aspects of safety captured by criminal legal system data may not align with community priorities or values. Narrow crime-oriented definitions often fail to recognize that conversations around community safety are highly localized. Allowing communities to define what safety means to them facilitates the development of locally driven priorities for action and interventions, ultimately helping advance the goal of safety for all.

This report explores the meaning of community safety for people who live and work in Missoula County, Montana by documenting local dynamics of crime, the criminal legal system, and conversations around the meaning of community safety. This report is part of a larger project that considers how adult residents of three US counties (Missoula County, Montana, St. Louis County, Missouri; and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina) define and understand community safety. These counties are currently working on interventions around crime and community safety funded, in part, thought the MacArthur Safety and Justice Challenge. The goal of the project was to develop a broad conceptualization of community safety that considers the views of people most impacted by crime and the criminal legal system. The findings are based on data from community surveys, as well as interviews and focus groups. The surveys were designed to capture a diversity of community voices. The interviews and focus groups allowed for a more in-depth examination of the views of criminal legal system actors, system-impacted individuals, and people who work with system-impacted persons, groups whose voices are often omitted in work of this type. Throughout, we draw on the interviews to highlight key findings and bring voice to the people closest to the challenges of building and maintaining safe communities.

• 
• 
•