Institute Intelligence, Fall 2023: Bail reform, supporting Manhattan’s youth, and more
By Carla Sinclair, Communications Associate
The CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance has been busy. As cities, counties, and states recover from COVID-19's initial impact, we’ve been working with them to create policies, practices, and partnerships that ensure their governments and public institutions are effectively serving all communities. This means strengthening community-based organizations in New York City so they can create pathways to opportunity. It means analyzing criminal legal data from across the country to explore how to safely reduce jail populations. It means training the next generation of public service leaders to govern strategically. It means many other things as well: here, we’ve put together a snapshot of the work we’ve done and are doing toward our goals of advancing justice, promoting opportunity, and optimizing state and local governments across the country. Sign up for our newsletter to get all the latest updates as we release them.
Advancing Justice
Exploring On-the-Ground Rollout of Bail Reform in New York
In 2019, New York passed criminal legal reforms that limited the use of cash bail and custodial arrest, changed practices around evidence sharing (discovery), and expanded pretrial services. As part of a multiyear process evaluation funded by Arnold Ventures, we’ve been unpacking how these changes were implemented on the ground – including by conducting interviews and focus groups with prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, pretrial service providers & people impacted by the system – to understand the biggest challenges and successes they encountered while implementing the changes.
Last week, we released Reform in Action: Findings and Recommendations from a 3-Year Process Evaluation of New York's 2020 Criminal Legal Reforms, which details how state and local agencies across New York State prepared for and executed implementation of the 2019 Criminal Justice Reform Act. The report documents the successes and challenges faced by local and state entities around planning as well as identifies concrete lessons learned from New York’s experience to inform policymakers in other communities exploring similar criminal legal reform.
In the News: "CUNY Institute report valuates implementation of New York’s 2019 Criminal Justice Reform Act" in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
On Our Blog: Research Analyst Aimee Ouellet wrote about strategies the team employed to remain flexible while collecting data and interviews for the study during COVID-19. Check out “How We Conducted On-the-Ground Research During a Global Pandemic” for more.
EXTRA, EXTRA: We also analyzed the content of local media coverage of the legislation to better understand its potential impact on public perception of the reforms. Dig into Reform in the Media for our findings.
For more on our work on NYS's criminal legal reforms, see our fact sheet series that digs deeper into the four provision areas (bail, pretrial services, appearance tickets, and discovery).
Dispelling the Myth that Criminal Legal Reforms Lead to Violence
At the start of COVID-19, many cities & counties launched strategies to reduce the number of people in their jails and curb the spread of the virus. At the same time, violent crime spiked across the country, in places that implemented reforms and those that did not. One of these strategies – known as pretrial release, which involves releasing people into the community while their trial makes its way through the court– has been used in cities and counties across the country long before the pandemic hit. Through our work on the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), we were able to explore whether these reforms were causing these spikes, and found that people released pretrial after reforms were no more likely to return to jail within a year than they had been before reforms – and were less than 0.01% returned to jail for a violent crime. Read more here.
In the News: OP-ED: "Criminal Legal Reforms Didn’t Lead to Violent Crime. Saying They Did Distracts from Real Solutions." by ISLG Executive Director Michael Jacobson & Senior Research Associate Sana Khan in Governing
Advancing Research on What Works in Criminal Legal Reform
As part of our work on the SJC, we oversee a Consortium of renowned research organizations that collaborate with SJC sites to study their efforts and share lessons learned about safely reducing jail populations as well as racial and ethnic disparities. Since 2019, we’ve developed, granted, and facilitated more than a dozen research projects with an almost equal number of partners in communities across the country. Check out some of our recent work:
Promoting Opportunity
Building Capacity for College-in-Prison Programs to Reach their Full Potential
This summer, the expansion of Pell Grant federal aid to incarcerated students opened the door to college in prison (CIP) programs for potentially hundreds of thousands more students - as well as the reduced recidivism, improved job prospects, and safer prisons that go along with it. But many prisons face operational challenges to offering these programs. Since 2017, ISLG has been a partner in the CIP Reentry Initiative, which has invested $7.3 million in expanding the capacity of postsecondary education in New York State correctional facilities. By doing so, the CIP Reentry Initiative helped facilities serve 931 students from fall 2017 through spring 2022, 84% of whom were new college students.
Last year, drawing from findings from ISLG’s process evaluation of CIP, we released the Smart Investment for New York series, documenting the Goals & Achievements and Lessons Learned from the initiative. This winter, we're releasing the final report, providing insight into creating, growing, and sustaining these programs.
Creating Safe, Supportive Spaces for Manhattan’s Youth & Young Adults
Funded by a partnership between us & the Manhattan DA’s Office, the Youth Opportunity Hubs are a group of five organizations across Manhattan that provide supportive spaces and services for teens and young adults. With our guidance, the Hubs created partnership networks of hospitals, legal agencies, and other groups to provide a full range of services – including education, employment, health, and family services –to help their young folks succeed. The final evaluation of the program was released this summer: among other measures of success, it found that two-thirds of participants met their goals of getting a job, enrolling in education, obtaining housing, or another aim.
On Our Blog: Research Associate Brandon Martinez wrote about how the hubs helped Manhattan youth in "Improving Youth Services & Supporting Goals: The Youth Opportunity Hub Initiative."
Weaving Networks of Support for People Living on NYC’s Streets
This summer, we teamed up with Manhattan District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg to fund community-based organization The Bridge to take a relationship-centric approach to helping people primarily living on the street in Manhattan. This $6M investment will create teams of Neighborhood Navigators with the lived experience to build trust with folks who are often reluctant to engage with outreach and connect them with any needed services, which may include housing, mental health, and substance use.
In the News: OP-ED: "Navigating a Better Path Forward on Mental Health" by Executive Director Michael Jacobson and Councilmember Carlina Rivera in Gotham Gazette.
Expanding & Strengthening Services for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence & their Families
As the body of research grows on best ways to prevent and heal from gender-based violence (GBV), we continue to expand our New York State portfolio to reflect what brings the best outcomes for survivors and their families. Last November, we partnered with the New York State Office of Victim Services (OVS) to launch the OVS Training and Technical Assistance Request Program (TTARP), which provides Victim Assistance Programs across the state with the tools to build capacity and create healthier organizations, which has come into full fruition. You can register for the next one, “Healing in Crisis: Empowering Front Line Workers and Survivors of Trauma,” here.
We’ve also been working with the Voices of Women Organizing Project (VOW), the NYC Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, and the New York Police Department (NYPD) for the Survivor-NYPD Project, a collaborative, multi-sector commitment to form a survivor-led space that identifies policies and practices that negatively impact survivors. Lastly, we’re overseeing the development of abusive partner intervention program (APIP) curriculums in New York City.
In the News: OP-ED: "We Need to Utilize All Proven Strategies to End Gender-Based Violence" by Program Director Alison Diéguez in Gotham Gazette
Optimizing Government & Institutions
Giving Current & Upcoming Leaders the Tools to Equitably & Effectively Govern
Good governance starts with informed policymakers. Since launching the Lindsay and Kriegel fellowships in 2019 and 2020, respectively, we have continued to build on our professional development programs for city and state government leaders.
In October, ISLG launched the fourth annual cohort of the Kriegel Fellowship for Public Service Leaders, a role-specific program designed to support and empower chiefs of staff to city and state legislators. This year's 22 Kriegel Fellows continue to engage in weekly skills-based workshops, peer-to-peer learning exercises, and policy discussions with experts.
On Our Blog: Learn about this year's cohort in "Fourth Cohort of Kriegel Fellowship for Public Service Leaders Kicks Off," as well as check out our most recent graduates in "Kriegel Fellowship, Class of 2023: In Photos."
Understanding & Improving Hate Crime Prosecution
Hate crimes have been on the rise over the past decade, but there’s little known on how to best flag, investigate, and prosecute them – often leaving affected communities without support. In partnership with Florida International University, we're embarking on a 2.5 year grant to work with prosecutorial offices from Broward County (Florida), Cook County (Illinois), Multnomah County (Oregon), Orleans Parish (Louisiana), and Philadelphia to understand factors related to hate crime prosecution, develop more effective policies and practices to prosecute them, and support survivors.
Identifying & Operationalizing Ways to Improve CUNY
Our Operations team has made big progress on its Next Level Projects agenda for 2021-2025, which includes various initiatives to make CUNY’s academic and administrative operations more effective and efficient.
In the past year, we’ve:
Published the strategic business plan for CUNY Public Safety, and are continuing to work on public safety improvements, such as developing the new Public Safety webpage.
Aided in the procurement of a CUNY-wide cloud-based human resources and finance system and are laying the groundwork to ensure successful implementation.
Analyzed near-term budget risks to the university with recommended solutions and will be drafting a new multi-year budget planning process.
Supported efforts to make the transfer process more equitable continue, including a report on the impacts of credit residency requirements on transfer students.
Led the strategic planning efforts to enhance support of CUNY athletics; and continue to help the University navigate COVID-19 protocols.
In 2023, the team will continue efforts to support these ongoing initiatives and begin new projects, such as evaluating funding strategies for the Graduate Center and improving capital planning processes.
On Our Blog: In "ISLG Partners with CUNY Public Safety to Develop a New Five-Year Strategic Plan,” Senior Policy Associate Nick Kilby breaks down the impetus, goals, and next steps in the project.
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