How Genesee County wants to change criminal justice: A New Juvenile Justice Center

Amy Diaz

January 10, 2021 |

Flint Beat |

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Response Location: United States, Flint, Michigan

A new Juvenile Justice Center that will focus on trauma-informed treatment of children rather than simply jailing them is still more than one year from completion. But, in the years leading to its opening, the county's family courts have cut in half the numbers of children held in detention by emphasizing rehabilitation programs over jail. Many of the services are based on the "Missouri Model" of juvenile justice, which has been shown to reduce incarceration and prevent crime through evidence-based approaches that are more therapeutic than punitive.

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'A chance to choose life': For some, drug courts break cycle of addiction and crime

Paul Cuno-Booth

January 09, 2021 |

Sentinel Source (The Keene Sentinel) |

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Response Location: United States, Keene, New Hampshire

Cheshire County Drug Court provides intensive drug addiction treatment, behavioral therapy, and other services to help people charged with crimes whose drug problems are their underlying problem. Since 2013, it has helped dozens of people avoid re-offending and put their lives on track. Like other drug courts, it is not suited to all circumstances and its coercive nature – jail is threatened for failure to follow the rules – has its critics. But graduates credit it with saving their lives. And it serves as a gateway to services that people might not otherwise have access to.

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An alternative to arrest? Police turn to diversion for petty crimes

Paul Cuno-Booth

January 07, 2021 |

Sentinel Source (The Keene Sentinel) |

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Response Location: United States, New Hampshire

Prosecutors often make decisions about which criminal charges can be resolved by addressing underlying problems and holding people accountable for petty offenses without incarcerating them. Police-led diversion programs catch cases earlier in the criminal process. Various New Hampshire police departments and in neighboring Brattleboro, Vermont, use the approach in dozens of cases per year, sparing those people the burdens and shame of jail and conviction. The approach has been proven effective in Seattle’s LEAD program as a way to prevent rearrests and to make people's lives more stable.

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A felony could have ruined his life. This program gave him a second chance.

Paul Cuno-Booth

January 05, 2021 |

Sentinel Source (The Keene Sentinel) |

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Response Location: United States, Vermont

Vermont's decades-old court diversion program uses restorative justice practices to erase criminal records and give people charged with lower-level offenses a shot at being held accountable, and giving back, without incarceration and convictions. Expanded significantly after legislators in 2017 applied the program to more categories of cases, the program has helped more than 90,000 people and now is used in as many as one-third of all misdemeanor cases. The program saves the state money and appears to contribute to lower rates of re-offending.

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Revolving door in Montana corrections still turning, despite reforms

Phoebe Tollefson

January 04, 2021 |

Helena Independent Record |

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Response Location: United States, Montana

A set of criminal justice reforms enacted in Montana in 2017 that were meant to reduce incarceration and reinvest some of the savings in crime prevention programs has had little effect on the prison population. The state's "justice reinvestment" program, using a model adopted in 30 other states, has failed to put plans into action, partly for a lack of public spending on programs for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. As a result, the prison population is tracking where it would have been had nothing been done, and recidivism remains high.

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New laws lead some Washington prosecutors to rethink three-strike life sentences

Manuel Villa Nina Shapiro

January 03, 2021 |

The Seattle Times |

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Response Location: United States, Washington

Nearly three decades after Washington voters made their state the first to enact a three-strikes law, imposing life imprisonment for repeated, serious offenses, some prosecutors have found ways to avoid the law's effects that are seen as unduly harsh or racially biased. Some have interpreted a law authorizing resentencing to apply to three-strikes cases. Others have pushed the governor to grant clemency more often. This new willingness to question the law's effects is not universal among prosecutors, and the state Supreme Court soon will weigh in on the issue.

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Prosecutors try to keep people out of pandemic-clogged courts through diversion programs

Rebecca Rivas

December 30, 2020 |

Missouri Independent |

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Response Location: United States, St. Louis, Missouri

Missouri legislators passed a law in 2019 clarifying that prosecutors can divert criminal cases to social services and healthcare agencies even before charges are filed. Small experiments that had been taking place in recent years suddenly grew in St. Louis County to help the courts focus only on serious cases during pandemic shutdowns. Now those innovations are spreading, as more drug cases and other low-level cases avoid the courts altogether. This eases the burden also on people, who in traditional drug courts still get arrested and face employment barriers even if their cases eventually get dropped.

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Pima County program getting people out of jail quicker, speeding up chances for a new life

Caitlin Schmidt

December 29, 2020 |

Arizona Daily Star |

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Response Location: United States, Tucson, Arizona

An array of services in Pima County, Arizona, greets hundreds of people getting released early from jail or helps keep them out of jail in the first place. By providing drug treatment, housing, job assistance, and other help that people need instead of incarceration, the county's Criminal Justice Reform Unit and Jail Population Review Committee saved the county $2 million in jail costs over just part of 2020. Drug use also declined and officials hope to see longer-range benefits in lower recidivism.

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These gardens ask visitors to reconsider solitary confinement

Anna Deen

December 23, 2020 |

Grist |

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Response Location: United States, New Orleans, Louisiana

Solitary Gardens is an art project that protests prisons' solitary confinement conditions. Incarcerated people connect with volunteers on the outside who plant flowers, vegetables, or herbs in beds matching the tiny dimensions of the prison cell that confined Herman Wallace for a record 41 years in Louisiana. The people inside prison imagine their garden, often with memory triggers of what they have lost, and their gardener carries out their plan. The idea is to make a place for grief, healing, public service, and public education, as the gardens in four cities teach about solitary confinement.

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Local initiative helps folks with cannabis-related charges find jobs—while pushing to decriminalize pot

Courtney Duchene

December 22, 2020 |

The Philadelphia Citizen |

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Response Location: United States, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

When Pennsylvania's largest medical-marijuana dispensary, TerraVida Holistic Centers, struggled to find enough employees, given the state's ban on the industry's employment of people with marijuana convictions, TerraVida joined with the Urban League of Philadelphia to expand aid to the formerly incarcerated. Through Urban League's Out4Good program, the partnership helps people expunge their drug convictions. It also counsels and financially helps groups of 10 trainees at a time, dozens of whom have started careers and stayed out of trouble. The group also seeks a longer-term fix: marijuana legalization.

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