Institute Intelligence, Summer 2024: Community investment, prosecutorial dashboards, supporting survivors, and more
By Carla Sinclair, Senior Communications Associate
With school back in session, fewer emails bouncing back with out-of-office messages, and heat beginning to subside, summer is coming to an end. But the past few months have been not been a vacation over here at CUNY ISLG: we've debuted work from across the country, from an innovative model for community investment in New York City to prosecutorial dashboards in Washington State; kicked off a Grassroots Policy Incubator to bring local leaders to the table; and gone north of the border to optimize state governments in Canada.
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Promoting Opportunity
Building Strong Communities through Strategic Investments
Over the past several years, we’ve worked with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DANY) to spearhead one of the most significant criminal legal reform funding efforts in the country. The Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII) used almost $250M in strategic investments to successfully develop over 50 mental health, employment, educational, and otherwise supportive programs serving more than 34,000 people across New York City. Thanks to a robust evaluation process, CJII has also created a valuable body of knowledge for future program design, implementation, and evaluation.
Reflecting on the past almost decade of work, this brief takes stock of CJII’s goals; discusses how DANY, CUNY ISLG, and other partners achieved them; and provides a blueprint for practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and funders. Read it here.
Growing Grassroots Restorative Justice Programs across New York City
Restorative justice is a set of principles, practices, and approaches that fosters communication and empathy in response to conflict or harm while holding the party who caused harm accountable. It is increasingly being woven into schools, courts, and other spaces to address both survivor and perpetrator needs by addressing the root causes of harm—and promoting long-term healing and restoration.
This summer, through a partnership between us and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, 16 community-based NYC organizations were funded to start or sustain innovative community-driven initiatives through a restorative justice framework. Learn more about each grantee in the press release.
In the news: NYC expands restorative justice programs: 'This is for them to come feel safe' - Gothamist
Representatives from the selected grantees joined MOCJ and CUNY ISLG staff for a kickoff meeting. Photo credit: Paula Vlodowsky.
New Funding for Community-Driven Policy Solutions
Grassroots, community-led organizations and leaders are often best positioned to effect meaningful change within their communities due to their established relationships, trust and legitimacy, as well as first-hand knowledge of community needs. However, they’re often the ones left out of funding and policy conversations. In partnership with NYC Opportunity, our Grassroots Policy Incubator is seeking to fund up to three organizations or leaders with up to $40k to participate in a six-month policy incubation process to develop solutions to policy gaps or challenges facing NYC communities.
Confronting the Barriers BIPOC Face Entering & Succeeding in the Mental Health Professions
Mental health practitioners from diverse backgrounds bring unique perspectives to their work. This can mean a distinct understanding of clients' challenges and experiences. Practitioners' lived experiences or diverse backgrounds help them think of innovative, culturally affirmative ways to help their clients. On an even simpler note, having a therapist that speaks the same language as you, or a psychiatrist who grew up in your neighborhood, is a step towards a foundation of trust and healing.
However, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) are underrepresented in these fields, especially in clinical field and leadership, and in leadership positions. We spoke with over 100 social workers, therapists, psychologists, case managers, peer navigators, and more to find out why these disparities exist – and offer solutions that policymakers, funders, and nonprofit leaders can embrace to better serve our communities. Read about them in our report.
“I'm Latina, and in my community, mental health is not acknowledged or encouraged. I had anxiety growing up and . . . it was perceived as me acting out.
I just feel like I want to be that help that I could not get in my community. It's also more comfortable when you see people who look like you... I want to be the help that I never received.”
Building Pathways from Prison to College in the Community
Many studies—including one we released earlier this year—show that college in prison (CIP) reduces recidivism and increases public safety. Yet, when CIP students return to the community and look to continue working toward their degree, they face challenges reenrolling. To increase the likelihood of degree completion, we're working with Public Policy Lab and the SUNY Office of Higher Education in Prison (OHEP) to strengthen supports available to formerly incarcerated people pursuing higher education in New York City. Read more on their website.
Advancing Justice
Breaking Down Data Siloes in Washington State
With increased calls for transparency and accountability in our criminal legal systems, state and local governments across the country are recognizing the value of using and sharing data to drive more effective and equitable decision-making, as well as increase public transparency–but the existence of different data collection tools and processes across agencies often creates siloes that make it difficult to see the totality of what is happening.
Over on the West Coast, we worked with the Snohomish County, Washington Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and other local partners to build the Law & Justice Dashboard, which provides a holistic view of trends across key criminal legal system points.
From bookings to pretrial release decisions to sentencing, the dashboard pulls data from County 911, the County Sheriff’s Office, and the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to monitor trends across key decision points; data can also be filtered by race, age, charge type, and other factors to see how different groups experience the system. Explore the dashboard for yourself.
On Our Blog: Research Project Director Ben Estep and Senior Research Associate Cecilia Low-Weiner break down how the Dashboard came to be, where it draws data from, and why data dashboards are a key part of the future of effective criminal legal reform.
In the News: New public database answers Snohomish County’s pressing crime questions – Herald Net
Understanding What Drives Probation Revocations—and Creating the Local Partnerships to Fix it
Since 2019, we’ve worked with counties to use innovative researcher-practitioner partnerships to rethink their approach to probation and parole. Following the mixed-method research conducted in 10 counties to better understand what was driving unsuccessful probation outcomes, four of those counties have put their findings into action. The latest report from the Reducing Revocations Challenge (RRC) explores the progress and lessons learned from implementing probation reform measures – and how other jurisdictions can follow suit.
On Our Blog: Action Research Teams, comprised of researchers and practitioners, were a core part of the RRC’s approach to not only identifying the drivers of probation violations, but also developing and implementing practical strategies that aim to increase successful probation outcomes. We wrote about this process on our blog. For a more in-depth look, dig into the policy brief.
Are Criminal Legal Reforms Leading to Violent Crime? Our One-of-a-Kind Data Says No
Case-level data from cities and counties implementing systemwide reforms as part of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety + Justice Challenge (SJC) provide a unique opportunity to examine violent crime among people released from jail before and after criminal legal reforms, as well as before and after COVID-19.
As the lead data and analytic partner of the SJC, our latest report on this topic provides data through 2023 on rebooking outcomes of individuals leaving jail after SJC pretrial reforms were passed. The data shows that only a very small proportion of rebookings were for violent crime charges.
On our blog: How can we look past rhetoric to find the facts? Researchers who led the latest study explain how our data refutes the assumption that jail reduction reforms may cause violent crime—and leads us to how we can actually find long-term community safety.
In the news: Lower jail populations didn’t cause COVID-era crime spikes: Study - Newsline
Researching What Works in Lowering Jail Populations Safely
As the primary data and analytic partner of the SJC, we’ve been working with counties of all sizes across the country to collect, analyze, and use their criminal legal data since 2015. Lowering Jail Populations and much of our other work builds on this data – which you can explore, too. Our Measuring Progress tool shows data on jail populations, rebookings, racial disparities, and more through early 2024, including new data on whether rebookings were for administrative reasons or for a new charge.
Optimizing Government & Institutions
Working with Providers Across New York to Better Support Survivors
Survivors of crime face unique challenges when rebuilding their lives, whether it’s finding a new job, housing, or counseling. Supportive services are critical in getting folks connected, but these organizations need the skills and training to work with survivors’ unique needs. Our Office of Victim Services (OVS) Training and Technical Assistance Request Program (TTARP) has been going full steam ahead to fill this need with tailored training to victim service providers (VAPs) across New York State.
Since April, we’ve worked with eight different VAPs, providing a total of 16 individualized trainings—pushing the overall number of of VAPs we've worked with to 22. Training topics included trauma-responsive teams and supervision, sustainable grant writing, office cultures of care, succession planning, vicarious and secondary trauma, and facilitation/presentation skills. Additionally, we’ve has coordinated three webinar series—soliciting 535 attendees from across the state—which focused on skills around working with survivors of trauma, youth domestic violence survivors, and people with trauma from incarceration. In total, we've hosted 14 webinars, which have attracted over 3.7K attendees.
“The safe space created for staff and management to have open and honest discussions regarding their experiences and concerns within the agency felt very refreshing, and a step towards healing.”
Welcoming the Next Kriegel Cohort of Legislative Chiefs-of-Staff
The fifth cohort of the Kriegel Fellowship comprises 20 chiefs of staff from across all five boroughs and the Hudson Valley. For the next few months, they will engage in discussions with policy experts, network, and build the skills to support them in their current roles and their future journeys in public service.
New this year to the Fellowship is the creation of a chief of staff Advisory Group, a collection of Kriegel alumni and other chiefs of staff to provide guidance on selecting speakers, policy topics, and other elements of the program. With their oversight, current Fellows gain access to their expertise, network, and the most up-to-date information on policy topics relevant to chiefs of staff. Read about our Fellowships here.
Going International with Local Government Partnerships
Our Operations team is expanding the footprint of our work with city governments to include Ottawa, Canada. The project will create key performance indicators to monitor city functions, evaluate service delivery, and identify improvement areas.
This continues the Operations team’s ongoing work in this space. We are also working with the Buffalo, NY, and Baltimore, MD, city governments; with the New School on work with the New York City budget; and previously with the Tampa, FL city government.
Continuing to Make CUNY More Efficient and Effective
The Operations team continues our work with CUNY on the Efficiencies for Re-Investment & Innovation (ERI) initiative. This fall, we’ll be assisting with the project management of key shared services projects in IT, Procurement, Collections, and Facilities Management. These important projects, once fully implemented, will be core pieces of CUNY’s efficiency and effectiveness goals.
We’ll also hold the first in a series of seminars as part of a new Financial Planning Fellowship Program. This program will bring together some of the top experts in state and city budget and finance with CUNY administrators and budget officers to help strengthen campus’ responses to the financial challenges of today and tomorrow.
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