Topic: Racial Disparities

To meaningfully advance racial equity in the criminal legal system, representatives from all components of the justice system, people directly impacted, and partners at the local, state, and federal level have built a National Initiative to Advance Race Equity in the Criminal Legal System.

These stakeholders recognize that administering justice and making communities safer requires authentic community engagement and elevating the voices of people directly impacted by the criminal legal system, especially including justice-involved individuals and their families, victims, and survivors of crime.

A convening of the group was facilitated by persons with lived experience, and the development of this framework represents this authentic engagement and collaboration by representatives of the criminal legal system.

A consensus statement of principles with supporting rationale and background literature has been created to equip federal, state, and local legal system stakeholders to explore and pursue new approaches to building stronger relationships with communities and the broader legal system to advance racial equity and promote community safety and well-being. This document contains a unified statement of principles, policies, and practical guidance to advance racial equity in the criminal legal system, as well as recent real-world examples of policies and practices implemented by a variety of system stakeholders and community organizations throughout the country.

The following principles are the basis for the policy recommendations developed through this collaborative and to inform future resources. They can be adopted at the tribal, local, state, and federal levels in communities throughout the country to meaningfully address the root causes of inequity and strengthen public safety.

Statement of Principles

• The criminal legal system is comprised of justice system stakeholders, including law enforcement, prosecutors, defenders, pretrial services, courts, correctional centers, and community-based corrections (e.g., probation, parole, reentry services), as well as community organizations, public participants (e.g., jurors), and the tribal, local, state, and federal partners that jointly determine individual- and community-level outcomes.
• The purpose of the criminal legal system is to serve the community, including victims, young people with legal system involvement, persons with lived experience in the justice system, and their families through promoting public safety, holding individuals accountable for their actions, administering justice, facilitating the rehabilitation of and reentry to communities of system-involved individuals, and ensuring support services and assistance for victims of crime to seek justice and healing.
• Racial equity is essential for the criminal legal system to achieve these purposes. When the system creates a disparate impact or fails to ensure full access to the benefits of the legal system to any person or community because of race or ethnicity, that system is inequitable. Racial equity in the criminal legal system is realized when all community members are fairly treated by the system in a manner that meets their needs and ensures everyone’s human dignity is acknowledged.
• A broad and comprehensive approach is necessary for the criminal legal system to adequately address the many causes and consequences of racial and ethnic disparities. Coordination across all system and community stakeholders which elevates the perspective of people with lived experiences in the justice system will best recognize the full scope of how the system impacts community outcomes and how best to implement effective and sustainable policies and practices to advance racial equity within systems.
• Authentic community engagement is an essential and often underappreciated component of comprehensive efforts to address racial equity. Authentic engagement that involves community members and persons with lived experience and their families, and victims and survivors in the shaping of system policies and practices, will best achieve desired community outcomes by leveraging the specific expertise and competencies of the community and fostering trust between system stakeholders and community members.

The criminal legal system exists to serve communities, which ultimately bear the outcomes of decisions made by system stakeholders. Thus, community members and persons directly impacted by the criminal legal system must be at the forefront of efforts to advance racial equity in the administration of justice and promotion of community safety. Authentic community engagement requires forging trust between system stakeholders and communities, centering community members in system decision making, and empowering them to act as equal partners in the shaping of policies and practices so that the system can fully meet the needs of communities, treat all persons equitably and with dignity, and realize greater justice, fairness, and safety for all.

This initiative and the convening were made possible through the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge and the efforts of those who volunteered their time and insights to produce the document.

Jan 16 is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but the commitment of the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) to improving racial and ethnic equity in the jail system runs year-round.

With that in mind, here are several blogs on the theme of racial and ethnic justice featuring members of SJC from the last year.

Reckoning with the Legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre

Members of the Safety and Justice Challenge learned during their annual convening in January 2022 about how Tulsa, Oklahoma has struggled to reckon with the legacy of its 1921 Race Massacre. The discussion showed how Tulsa’s history impacts its present. It also demonstrated the complexity any jurisdiction must face in navigating ongoing inequities as it seeks to lower its jail populations sustainably and fairly. Madison Dawkins, manager of local partnerships at the Square One Project, chaired the discussion.

Two years since George Floyd, The Challenge of Sustaining Momentum for Reform

May 25, 2020 marked two years since Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. Following his death, people protested racial injustice in the criminal justice system across the country and beyond, and as a result, some cities and counties pledged to make significant changes to law enforcement. But in conversations with people involved with the Safety and Justice Challenge, many reflected on how not enough has changed in two years since Mr. Floyd’s death and how the landscape for criminal justice reforms is now becoming more challenging. And yet, they also pointed to areas of progress.

A New “Tap-In” Center Aims to Restore Community Trust

There is new hope in St. Louis County for people afraid to move on with their lives or engage with the criminal justice system because of unresolved warrants, municipal code violations, or having missed a court date. The “tap-in” center, which is part of a national effort to lower jail populations in jurisdictions across the country as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge, aids in responding to concerns raised by the Department of Justice about racial injustice related to municipal court practices in its 2015 investigation into the Ferguson Police Department which is located in the northern part of St. Louis County.

Linking Mass Incarceration to Black History in Los Angeles and Beyond

Members of the Safety and Justice Challenge grappled with questions about how mass incarceration is linked to Black history at a recent fireside chat during the annual convening of SJC network members. Bria L. Gillum, Senior Program Officer, Criminal Justice with the MacArthur Foundation hosted the conversation with Kelly Lytle Hernandez, a professor of History and African American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. She is also a member of the SJC Advisory Council and a MacArthur Fellow.

A Deeper Look at Racial Disparity Data in Jails

Cities and counties participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge significantly reduced their jail populations over the past few years – both prior to and following the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite that progress, racial and ethnic disparities in jails persist. In early 2022, the SJC selected four jurisdictions to join a new Racial Equity Cohort based on proposals that explicitly focus on racial and ethnic equity in the criminal justice system; center lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color; and emphasize the SJC Community Engagement Pillars of authenticity, accessibility and transparency, respect for diversity, and commitment to ongoing engagement. Reagan Daly and Stephanie Rosoff with the Institute for State and Local Governance investigate the data.

Focusing on Racial Equity in the Justice System

Hear from SJC sites in Philadelphia, Chicago and New Orleans about their efforts as part of the new racial equity cohort.

Finding Our Voice to Reduce Native American Incarceration Across SJC Sites

November is Native American Heritage month. It gives a platform for Native people in the United States of America to share their culture, traditions, music, crafts, dance, and ways and concepts of life. It is also an appropriate time to highlight the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in jails across the country while actively pursuing solutions. Michaela Seiber, MPH, blogged about a recent trip she took to Pima County, Arizona, from Minnehaha County in South Dakota to see how Pima County’s SJC initiative is working with the community to reduce incarceration and improve health outcomes.

A Q&A on Hispanic Heritage Month with 70 Million Creator Juleyka Lantigua

70 Million, LWC Studios’ podcast about criminal justice reform, was nominated for a Peabody Award and won several others. Juleyka reflects on the rising-majority population of the country, the local impact of jails, and the role of racial and ethnic equity in reform.

Counties Enhancing Racial Equity in the Criminal Justice System through Grantmaking

The National Association of Counties, in partnership with the National Criminal Justice Association and with support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, has released a toolkit for counties interested in addressing racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal legal system through grantmaking. The toolkit outlines eight principles, developed by a working group of county stakeholders, state administering agency representatives, and community-led organization leaders, to help enhance equity in the criminal legal system. It features several communities participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge.

A new national report from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation highlights that Native people are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States.

The report, commissioned as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), shows that in states with higher Native populations, incarceration rates are up to seven times that of White people, and that Native people are sentenced more harshly than White, African American, and Hispanic individuals. Moreover, American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) were incarcerated at a rate 38 percent higher than the national average and were overrepresented in the prison population in 19 states compared to any other race and ethnicity.

The full report can be read here. A variety of media covered the report’s launch including Montana Public Radio,Wisconsin Gannett, Native News Online, the Lakota Times and Cheyenne Arapaho Tribal Tribune.

“Like many modern challenges in Indian Country, over-incarceration of Indigenous people is intimately tied to colonial violence and upheld by policies throughout the years,” said Dr. Ciara Hansen, currently a clinical psychologist in the Iina’ Counseling Services department at Northern Navajo Medical Center and author of the report. “Paternalistic solutions applied to Native communities often miss the important step of seeking to understand the issue from the community’s perspective. This report offers a starting point for discussion and knowledge sharing.”

“The report not only highlights the painful and unacceptable treatment of Native people in the criminal justice system, but also underscores the overreliance on incarceration to solve community issues,” said Bria Gillum, a senior program officer at MacArthur.  “It is our hope that the report contributes to the growing conversation about racial disparities in this broken system, sparks deeper collaboration between state and tribal agencies, and leads to investments in diversion services that can end this devastating cycle.”

The national report is authored by Dr. Desiree L. Fox (Bitterroot Salish), Dr. Ciara D. Hansen, (Shawnee/Cherokee), and Ann Miller, an attorney with the Tribal Defenders Office of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on the Flathead Reservation in Montana.

Additional key findings in the report include:

• According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 45 percent of people incarcerated in tribal jails were being held pretrial, and pretrial detention rose by at least by 80 percent since 1999. The average length of stay doubled from 2002 to 2018.
  • Additionally, the most serious offense for 16 percent of people held in tribal jails was public intoxication and 15 percent were held for drug related or DUI charges.
  • Native youth are more likely to face conviction in adult court, especially for drug-related crimes.
• The number of jails in Indian Country has increased by 25 percent since 2000, which has led to filling them with more people charged and held with petty crimes for longer periods of time.
• The 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics report showed tribal jail incarceration rates steadily increased by 60 percent since 2000. The most recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, however, has shown a significant reduction of incarceration in tribal jails during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report demonstrates the need for ongoing research to decrease the rates of arrests and incarcerations of Native people. More research is particularly needed to better understand the experiences of Native people and the systemic change necessary to meaningfully improve outcomes.

The recommendations put forth by the authors of the report include:

• Empower tribal justice systems which are better positioned to intervene because they offer services that are culturally relevant, restorative, and fair.
• Change the trajectory before, or even after, Native people are pulled into state and federal systems by addressing the underlying issues that bring people into the criminal justice system and the collateral consequences that pull them back in.
• Provide funding to appoint counsel to the indigent, tribally based public defender offices to support positive change that are most congruent with traditional, restorative practices.
• Encourage tribal public defenders to work with their clients in the context of their community—their families, their elders, their values, and their definitions of success.

The report is based on data from several surveys and sources, including the Indian Law and Order Commission, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and others. The full list of sources can be found at the end of the report.