How Elected Officials Can Build Criminal Legal Systems that Keep People Out of Jail—Safely
By Patrick Hart, Program Director
Building safer, more equitable criminal legal systems takes intentionality and reliance on best practices. With reform top-of-mind for many newly elected officials—as well as for policymakers who have been in office for years—we draw lessons learned from ISLG’s years of experience building programs and policies that create systems grounded in safety, connection, and compassion.
This January, communities of all sizes across the country swore in new governors, mayors, legislators, District Attorneys, and other officials elected last November. Despite claims that 2023 would see a wave of “tough on crime” policymakers, many of these new elected officials were swept into office on promises of criminal legal system reform, including DAs in Alameda County, CA, and Hennepin County, MN and a new U.S. Senator in Pennsylvania with a long history of supporting expanded clemency and decarceration.
A few months into their tenure, reform-oriented leaders are already making waves in their communities, such as through new strategies for responding to individuals with mental health challenges and creating alternatives to incarceration that emphasize support services. That said, elected officials also face an obstacle course of requests, demands, and options on every issue imaginable; through this, it’s important to remember that following the data is the surest way to build a fairer criminal legal system with a smaller footprint. Through years of work developing, implementing, researching, and uplifting programs and policies with a track record of building safer, fairer, and more equitable communities, ISLG has gleaned important lessons in what does and doesn’t work. We are sharing some helpful guideposts as a resource for elected officials and their staff, and hope they are helpful in continuing to build communities grounded in connection and compassion.
Invest in Wraparound Services
Time and time again, we have seen that a key way to support safety is to invest in a coordinated network of services and supports for communities. In partnership with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, we’ve fostered projects through the Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII) such as the Youth Opportunity Hubs, which ensure that young people in underserved parts of Manhattan have access to educational programming, legal services, paid work opportunities, health care, and more. An early evaluation has already shown that participants and staff feel that the Hubs made neighborhoods safer and reduced community violence. Even outside of a fully comprehensive structure like Hubs, partnerships between organizations in different sectors can fill gaps with programming. These can be both uplifting and fiscally smart: the Medical-Legal Partnership between the Legal Aid Society and Mt. Sinai connected students with special education needs and their families with lawyers to advocate for services—with a high return-on-investment, both economically and socially. Cross-sector partnerships like this are important: after all, our lives don’t happen in silos, and our social services shouldn't either.
Cross-sector partnerships like this are important: after all, our lives don’t happen in silos, and our social services shouldn't either.
Prioritize Diversion and Deflection Wherever Possible
While jail population reduction efforts are happening in cities and states across the country—and are critical parts of making the system more equitable—it's also important for policymakers and practitioners to think more broadly about moving away from court processes as the default response for every situation. Does every infraction require a criminal legal response? If it does, are there light-touch means of resolving the issue? Through the Safety and Justice Challenge, communities across the country have used diversion and deflection policies and programming to reduce the time people spend interacting with the criminal legal system. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is one such community, where the county has created diversions and deferred prosecution agreements, including developing mental health diversion processes. In SJC site Pennington County, South Dakota, a suite of diversion programs run by the State's Attorney's Office offer people a second chance to avoid entering the system and the negative consequences that come alongside a criminal conviction. CJII funds diversion as well: Project Reset, a pre-arraignment diversion program which is now being scaled up across New York City, shows promise in resolving arrests for low-level misdemeanors without court involvement, helping people avoid unnecessary and damaging incarceration. By prioritizing diversion and deflection, communities can prevent many people from entering the system in the first place.
Invest in Alternatives to Incarceration
For those who are convicted at trial or plead guilty, communities should identify ways to reduce or eliminate terms of incarceration. This is true even for offenses that are considered more serious: as many commentators have noted, mass incarceration cannot be eliminated without rethinking how society responds to offenses that have traditionally been regarded as serious or violent. The Trauma-Informed Abusive Partner Intervention Program shows one pathway to repairing harm, building accountability, and preventing further violence for people charged with intimate partner violence that does not rely on incarceration, while still prioritizing safety and support for survivors of violence. This is just one example of a program that takes an alternative route to justice, and it is for a very specific population – but that highlights the importance of programs being well-tailored to the populations they are working with. As with many areas of programming and policy, one size does not fit all.
Reforms are needed to make practices more limited, modest, and supportive and ensure supervision does not represent an expansion of the punishment bureaucracy.
These programs must be intentional about not becoming just another pathway to incarceration. We see this challenge across the field, including in widely used community supervision options such as probation and parole. Probation and parole have become a leading reason people are going to prison, with revocations now resulting in almost 45% percent of prison admissions. Reforms are needed to make practices more limited, modest, and supportive and ensure supervision does not represent an expansion of the punishment bureaucracy. Through the Reducing Revocations Challenge, we’re working with communities nationwide to identify the drivers of probation-generated reincarceration and to ensure that people are not landing in prison for minor acts of noncompliance or missteps that would be more appropriately and effectively addressed through treatment. For example, Pima County, Arizona, is working to reduce the burden of drug testing for clients, while emphasizing alternate ways to respond when tests are failed, recognizing that relapse is part of recovery.
Create Reentry Services to Help, not Hinder, Those Reentering our Communities
Providing the tools to thrive as a member of society is one of the best ways to ensure a person leaving incarceration doesn’t return. The positive impact of providing college education to those in prison is well documented, and ISLG has added to this literature with our evaluation of the College-in-Prison Reentry Initiative. Fortunately, both the federal and New York State governments are expanding financial support eligibility for students in college-in-prison programs, and the coordination that ISLG has done with the State University of New York (SUNY), the John Jay College Institute for Justice and Opportunity, and public and private colleges across the state will help this expansion succeed.
Further, it is important to have a comprehensive set of programs that help connect those reentering society from jail or prison with education, jobs, and housing. CJII-supported programs like Drive Change’s Fellowship, College and Community Fellowship, and the Health Justice Network all help fill these needs by providing participants with sector-specific employment training, help earning academic credentials, connections to primary health services, and a supportive community for those returning from incarceration. Policymakers should look at ways to support and expand programs like these so that everyone exiting jail and prison has a full, complete, and well-resourced reentry plan and a clear point of contact when they reenter society.
These ideas only scratch the surface of the many policies, proposals, and programs that offer an opportunity to rethink the criminal legal system in a more holistic and less punitive way. Elected officials should take note of these and other strategies and use them as building blocks towards system reform and reinvention.
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