New Safety and Justice Challenge Tool Gives In-Depth Look at Jail Population Trends
By Cecila Low-Weiner, Research Associate
In the fight to reduce the misuse and overuse of jails across the United States, jurisdictions must be able to track and analyze trends in their jail population to effectively identify and monitor solutions. In partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, ISLG has launched a new resource aimed at helping stakeholders and the public track progress achieved by jurisdictions participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC).
Since the start of the initiative in 2015, jurisdictions have implemented data-driven jail reduction strategies developed in conjunction with stakeholders, experts, and the community. Measuring Progress is a tool that explores the impact of those strategies by highlighting trends in overall jail populations, bookings, and associated racial and ethnic disparities. Each view in the tool explores a different jail trend and enables users to drill down to individual SJC jurisdictions.
This launch is only the beginning. In the coming months, we will add new findings that explore how the composition of jails has changed over time—such as who is being held, what they’re being held for, and for how long. A series of briefs is in development that dives deeper into the data and further explores the progress SJC sites have made towards reducing the misuse and overuse of jails. The tool will refresh trends quarterly, so make sure to check back regularly.
What is the Safety and Justice Challenge?
In 2015, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Foundation) launched the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a multi-year initiative to reduce jail populations and racial and ethnic disparities in jails. To date, the SJC has provided $252 million to help jurisdictions use innovative, collaborative, and evidence-based strategies to create fairer, more effective justice systems.
The sites are in diverse geographic regions and operate jails that range from 140 to 20,000 beds. Jurisdictions receive funding from the Foundation and support from a network of national experts and technical assistance providers to implement comprehensive, system-wide criminal legal reforms toward reducing the use of jail incarceration and its disproportionate impacts on communities of color. To track the progress of reforms in the SJC jurisdictions, the Foundation engaged the Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG) at the City University of New York (CUNY).