Topic: Racial and Ethnic Disparities

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San Francisco has been able to reduce its jail population since joining the Safety and Justice Challenge while keeping the community safe.

As a result of these reductions, San Francisco was able to close the seismically unfit County Jail #4. The Safety and Justice Challenge partnership laid the foundation for this success and provided a space for community advocates and system partners to engage with the closure process.

The Safety and Justice Challenge has shown San Francisco what we can accomplish through shared focus, good data, strong coordination, connection to community-based supports, and close partnership with people most affected by the criminal justice system.

Remaining Challenges

San Francisco partners know there is more work to do. Partners must work to sustain jail population reductions amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. System partners and community members are also committed to ending persistent racial disparities in jail, which have remained constant despite overall reductions. Partners believe that change is possible in San Francisco. Guided by ongoing analysis of data and partnership with people who have lived experience, San Francisco will continue to refine the strategies above and develop new strategies to meet shared goals.

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The pretrial court processing pilot in New Haven increased the number of defendants who are diverted to a community-based program instead of jail, and it reduced the length of stay by two weeks.

The Hartford Alternative to Arrest Project helped support roughly 800 individuals with mental health, substance abuse, and housing needs. These individuals were redirected to alternative services instead of jail.

Because of the expanded Jail Diversion Substance Abuse program, people with substance use disorders were provided with access to court-based diversion to detox and residential treatment to avoid pretrial detention.

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Strategies including the launch of the Initial Appearance Program have proved successful. Between April 2019 and early 2021, over 900 individuals have been supported with legal representation. Before the program, 53% of individuals were held on no bond or a cash-only bond at initial appearance. When people came to the initial appearance with legal representation, 78% of individuals had a reduction in bond or negotiated a release on recognizance, without paying bail.

As a result of the expedited probation program, the average length of stay for individuals decreased from 99 days to just 12 days during the period of 2017 to 2019. Because of the success of the program, the Missouri Probation and Parole department now fully funds the program and has hired staff to work at the county jail to fully institutionalize it.

Each of the county’s strategies is meant to decrease the disproportionate burden that people of color face in the criminal justice system. St. Louis County is also advised by the Ethnic and Racial Disparities committee, made up of criminal justice stakeholders, representatives from community advocacy groups, and individuals with lived experiences. As a result, the county is also seeing a sustained decline in racial and ethnic inequities in its justice system. As of Fall 2020, the population of Black people detained in jail has declined 37% during the Safety and Justice Challenge grant period, compared with 31% among white people. Length of stay has also declined, with Black individuals experiencing a 44% decline in the length of stay compared with 41% for white individuals.

The Population Review Team (PRT) has been meeting regularly since June 2018 to identify people who do not need to be in jail and can be safely released pretrial. As a result of the work of the PRT, there has since been a substantial decline in the Average Daily Population of people in the jail. Overall, the PRT has become a laboratory for innovation with committed stakeholders at the table who are committed to advancing the goals of SJC and beyond.

The newest St. Louis County initiative, the Tap In Center, has proved especially popular. For example, one individual visited the Tap In Center in January 2021 to get a public defender and a new court date. She said, “I am just very pleased with this program, I’ve felt stuck all my life with these warrants. To know that this program is available to help people, it’s a real reliever! Now that I don’t have a warrant I am about to be getting a job thanks to the Tap In Center!”

Remaining Challenges

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

While progress has been made in reducing racial and ethnic disparities, there is still work to be done in advancing equity in St. Louis County’s jails. The county will continue to work with the local community to develop initiatives that are responsive to the need for reform and assess any possible negative outcomes that could happen as a result.

St. Louis County has also developed a comprehensive plan for additional strategies and initiatives to invest in a safer, more effective, and more equitable system. The county will work with community service providers to expand access to mental health and substance abuse treatment, expand warrant resolution efforts, and continue to build the technological infrastructure and data capacity needed to sustain this work.

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on local justice systems 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.

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Since joining the Safety and Justice Challenge, the jail population in Palm Beach County has been significantly reduced while keeping the community safe.

The county’s PalmFUSE program has demonstrated that housing frequent utilizers and providing them with wraparound services creates stability and ensures that people with behavioral health issues do not cycle in and out of jail. Launched as a pilot, the initial PalmFUSE project provided housing and case management for 12 unhoused individuals with behavioral health issues who were frequently arrested and cycled in and out of jail. Before the program, the 12 participants had been arrested 64 times collectively in the two years before they were housed. The pilot was completed in 2020. All participants have remained in housing, and no one has been rearrested since joining the program. A new contract has been signed to expand the program to 25 participants in 2021.

The county’s text message court date reminder system has successfully reduced the number of warrants issued for failure to appear by 62% for Public Defender clients, as of December 2020.

Initial Case Conference (ICC) hearings are designed to decrease the average length of stay for incarcerated individuals charged with second- and third-degree felonies. COVID-19 has unfortunately affected the program by increasing length of stay. Further research is being conducted to measure the program’s impact as court schedules return to normal.

There is productive collaboration among key stakeholders, including judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, public defenders, and community members, which has contributed to the progress to achieve a more fair and equitable use of jails.

Remaining Challenges

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

The major challenge the county faces is significantly reducing racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. The county is doubling down on the work to address disparities moving forward.

A second challenge is to examine changes the county has made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to determine if they are effective and should be continued after the pandemic has subsided. These changes include amending the administrative bond schedule and scheduling bond hearings more quickly.

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By 2020, jail use in Charleston County was returning to its intended purpose, reducing the harms of unnecessary incarceration on people, families, and communities. This included a reduction in the jail population, local bookings, individuals booked, and charges.

The centralized database, launched in 2017, and now provides access from across the criminal justice system to see results, conduct analysis, and evaluate how the local criminal justice system is functioning and allows for identification of areas with the opportunity for improvement. This reporting shows that the municipal and magistrate charges brought to the jail declined by 78% from 2014 – 2020.

Five single-charge bookings, including simple possession of marijuana, open container, misdemeanor shoplifting, trespassing, and public intoxication, were specifically targeted as part of the county’s Safety and Justice Challenge efforts, and as a result, were reduced by 84% from 2014 – 2020. The number of people regularly cycling through the jail who were booked and released between 2014 – 2020 decreased by 63%.

The county made significant progress in diverting people from jail to alternatives to help get the help they need. In 2019, law enforcement referred 74 individuals to the Tri-County Crisis Stabilization Center, conducted 473 law enforcement consultations with embedded clinicians, and executed 152 law enforcement drop-offs to the Charleston Dorchester Mental Health Center.

Bond court representations by public defender attorneys started in 2016, gradually increasing from zero in 2015, to 2,128 in 2020. Bond court judges also became involved as partners, getting more information on setting bonds that are fair, just, and meaningful. As part of this, Pretrial Service Reports were set up in 2018 to better inform bond setting judges. These reports offered a consistent, objective, and reliable way to assess for risk of rearrests and/or missing court. By 2020, the reports became available to over 90% of bond hearings in the Centralized Bond Court.

The average number of days in the early stages of case processing improved from 2015 to 2020. This included improvements in the time it took to be assigned a public defender, assigned a solicitor, and how long it took for initial evidence from law enforcement to be provided to prosecutors.

While analyzing the relative rates of incarceration between racial and ethnic groups helped the county improve inequities in the criminal justice system, there is still more work to do. Disproportionately, Black people were booked into the local jail on low-level target charges as well as overall charges, although the gap had shrunk between 2014 and 2017.

The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) efforts to engage the community in the development of the strategic plan brought together over 1,200 community members, including many with direct experience of the justice system. Together, community members and system stakeholders (i.e., judges, public defenders, prosecutors, etc.) created the CJCC’s strategic plan in 2020, focusing on identifying data trends and community priorities to advance change for the next three years (FY2021 – FY2023).

Remaining Challenges

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

The county’s current strategic plan aims to do more to help protect public safety, minimize harm, and more efficiently use limited system resources—all to create an effective, just, and equitable local criminal justice system.

The strategic plan includes a focus on community engagement, to keep people involved and provide more ways to engage in improving its criminal justice system. It also includes a planned update on the data around racial and ethnic disproportionality and disparities. Beyond data, a race equity fellowship proposal is in the works to create effective agents of change in building consciousness and reducing disparities among criminal justice system actors and people who are leading efforts to address racial and ethnic inequities throughout the community.

Regular reviews of the local jail population continue to be necessary, helping make sure that people who are not a threat to public safety or a flight risk are not detained pretrial unnecessarily. Continued General Sessions court reminders continue to remind defendants of their upcoming court events to increase court appearances and help make sure that the system doesn’t lose contact with people while their cases are pending.

The county must also continue to work on options for diverting and deflecting people from jail. This will include inter-agency case conferencing with service providers, law enforcement, and judicial stakeholders to improve outcomes for those who are most frequently booked into the local jail in an effort to break the cycle of repeated jail use; research on how diversion and deflection from the criminal justice system and into diversionary options impacts arrests, jail population, and behavioral health outcomes; and stronger county-wide tracking on crime and jail use.

The county will also continue to focus on bond hearings in Centralized Bond Court are fair, just, and meaningful. Regardless of the type of bond set, within the state there is currently minimal oversight of the conditions of the bond setting, let alone feedback about pretrial outcomes or a continuum of pretrial options available to help maximize safety and improve the rate of appearances. The strategic plan includes developing a proposal to help address these challenges.

The CJCC, in partnership with Trident United Way 211, is working to strengthen the directory of services for justice-involved people that will help ensure they know which services are available and who they can help.

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 jail. More research is needed on the impacts of the pandemic on the justice system, and what lessons can be learned in the long-term.