Safety and Justice Challenge

Challenge:

Though the challenge of mass incarceration has generated growing concern in recent years, the emphasis of the dialogue has centered on the prison population, largely omitting the significant role of local jails in driving this problem. Jails are intended only to hold people serving short sentences—as well as those awaiting court proceedings who are a danger to public safety or a flight risk—but their reach extends far beyond that in reality. Indeed, on any given day in America, more than 740,000 individuals are in jail, with more than 10 million admissions per year. Within this population exist harsh disparities, with dramatic overrepresentation among Black, Latinx, and Indigenous populations, mentally ill individuals, and those below the poverty line. What’s more, three out of every five people in jail are presumed innocent—many without the resources to post bail—and many are there for nonviolent offenses. These facts come at a cost to both incarcerated individuals and society as a whole, in the form of further system involvement, a more expansive jail-to-prison pipeline, and economic costs that fail to deliver associated increases in public safety.

The over-incarceration problem is so ubiquitous, and so many years in the making, that it can only be addressed through innovative, forward-thinking solutions with the support of local leaders from across the country. Local drivers of over-incarceration must be identified from the ground up—within cities, counties, and states, with a diverse set of community stakeholders—in order to improve the system as a whole.

Approach:

To develop smart solutions and empower local and state leaders to implement data-driven strategies, the MacArthur Foundation invested $217 million to launch the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), providing grants to more than 50 jurisdictions interested in reform. The sites receive financial support and technical assistance in their efforts to implement data-driven strategies to safely reduce jail populations and racial and ethnic disparities across the system. ISLG was selected as the national intermediary and primary data and analytic partner, tasked with supporting the Foundation in initiative oversight, monitoring progress, and identifying and disseminating lessons learned for the broader criminal justice field. 

To help the Foundation, sites, and partners position Challenge sites for impact—and monitor each jurisdiction’s progress toward the goals of reducing incarceration and improving equity—we undertake a range of activities, including:

• Collecting comprehensive, system wide criminal justice data from Challenge sites on an annual basis

• Creating and tracking performance metrics and performing more in-depth analysis of key trends 

• Providing analytic and data capacity-building assistance to sites to support the development and implementation of robust strategies 

• Providing strategic guidance and project management toward measurable outcomes

ISLG also launched and manages a Research Consortium of pre-qualified researchers who carry out rigorous studies to better understand the outcomes and impacts of the SJC work, including the effectiveness of various strategies for reducing jail incarceration and racial and ethnic disparities while preserving public safety. The research that comes out of the Consortium is meant to inform broader reform efforts in the field. Learn more about the Consortium here.

Progress:

ISLG collects criminal justice data from 25+ SJC sites, including case-level criminal justice data from across the system in 15+ sites, and has used that data to complete a variety of analyses. In addition to producing multiple performance reports that provide a comprehensive view of jail, arrest, and racial and ethnic disparities trends, we completed a soon-to-be-released analysis that examines public safety outcomes in SJC sites following implementation of reforms. Our work to date shows significant progress toward reducing incarceration in many SJC sites, and even more substantial reductions since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Even with these dramatic reductions, however, disparities persist.

With the launch of the consortium, ISLG is now supporting research and evaluation work that delves further into the impact of targeted reforms on jail, racial equity, and public safety trends, with the goal of disseminating the learnings of SJC to the extended criminal justice field. The research consortium currently has four projects underway to better understand criminal justice decision-making and the impacts of strategies ranging from diversion to probation violation policies. The first consortium project, an evaluation of Cook County’s bond court reforms, was released in October 2020.

Learn more by visiting the Safety and Justice Challenge site, or contact Reagan Daly, Research Director, at Reagan.Daly@islg.cuny.edu for more information.