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Building Safe, Thriving Communities: Research-Based Strategies for Public Safety

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Building Safe, Thriving Communities: Research-Based Strategies for Public Safety BUILDING SAFE, THRIVING COMMUNITIES: RESEARCH-BASED STRATEGIES FOR PUBLIC SAFETY NYU School of Law Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law Kim Foxx Cook County State’s Attorney Garry McFadden Mecklenburg County Sherif Stephanie Morales Commonwealth’s Attorney for the City of Portsmouth Marilyn Mosby Baltimore City State’s Attorney Rachael Rollins Sufolk County District Attorney October 2020 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Decades of harsh, carceral law enforcement Lawmakers and prosecutors across the country practices have perpetuated cycles of violence are implementing policies to reduce the reliance and harm without making us safer. The number on money bail as a mechanism for pretrial of individuals behind bars—particularly for detention and to replace the wealth-based system low-level ofenses—is not a measure of public with practices designed to help individuals meet safety, and in fact has tremendous costs and their pretrial obligations. In addition, reforms to consequences that detract from the goal of probation systems are decreasing recidivism rates creating healthy, stable communities. Progress by tailoring conditions to serve rehabilitative toward this goal requires transformational purposes and reducing the length of supervision. change in the way we approach law enforcement And many jurisdictions are rethinking their practices, specifcally in the felds of policing, approach to marijuana enforcement, either prosecution, and sentencing. We cannot continue legalizing or decriminalizing the use of small to use incarceration as our default solution. amounts, or reducing the severity of the All over the country, law enforcement ofcials, consequences associated with marijuana ofenses. prosecutors, and lawmakers are reducing their Sentencing reforms include second-look or reliance on enforcement and incarceration, and sentence review policies in district attorney ofces are instead implementing practices and policies that reevaluate excessively harsh sentences or that focus on reinvestment, research-based dubious convictions. Lawmakers have introduced strategies, and community engagement. measures aimed to eliminate mandatory New models in policing include narrowing minimums, allow people to seek early release the wide scope of police responsibilities and or reduction in sentence length under certain enabling alternative frst responders, such as conditions, and improve parole processes. social workers and mental health professionals, to The evidence demonstrates that these new respond to calls related to a mental or behavioral approaches are efective in reducing crime and health crisis. Violence interruption programs are incarceration rates. Polling demonstrates that reducing gun violence through community-led these reforms are also widely popular with the engagement that both prevents instances of lethal public. More and more, elected leaders and their violence and develops community norms toward constituents are recognizing that a path to safety peaceful confict resolution. And alternative and stability does not lie in a return to past, failed enforcement mechanisms, like non-police trafc practices, but in an evidence-based, innovative patrols, can both reduce unnecessary force and reimagining of our law enforcement system. arrests while equipping police to focus their resources on the most serious ofenses. BUILDING SAFE, THRIVING COMMUNITIES: RESEARCH-BASED STRATEGIES FOR PUBLIC SAFETY 2 Specifcally, we analyze sentencing and INTRODUCTION incarceration policies and law enforcement practices, including those in policing and Safety is a core need for every person, family, prosecution, that have created systems of control and neighborhood in America, and it is the chief but failed to treat underlying challenges. The responsibility of government to ensure that report then lays out a new path for public safety people have the security and stability necessary that looks to the comprehensive, research-based to thrive and live with dignity. Over the past strategies in policing, prosecution, and sentencing half century, the United States has embraced that elected and appointed leaders are using to the philosophy that more policing, prosecution, move away from harsh carceral practices and and incarceration will achieve public safety. respond to social and economic needs. These Overwhelming evidence has demonstrated that reforms illuminate a new vision of public this is a failed approach. In fact, these practices safety that reduces our reliance on systems of have had ruinous consequences for individuals, enforcement and control while relying instead families, and communities—particularly those on research, collaboration, and community in neighborhoods that experience both over- engagement—not incarceration—to build and investment in carceral practices and under- support communities. investment in housing, education, and healthcare. The reform eforts underway by prosecutors, city councilmembers, and state legislators BACKGROUND refect an understanding that past practices have not only proven inefective at keeping us safe but have wrought tremendous damage The State of Our System Today on communities that have been harmed by divestment and inequality. A true vision for The number of people under some form of public safety includes reducing our reliance on correctional control in the United States has police for situations that call for a non-criminal exploded over the past fve decades. At the time approach; reconsidering prosecutorial practices the COVID-19 pandemic began, nearly 2.3 million that use the wrong metrics for evaluating risk and people were behind bars in the United States— accountability; reevaluating sentences as drivers an increase of more than 500% over the past 40 of mass incarceration; and reinvesting in and years—with twice as many people on probation engaging communities so that they can become and parole. When combined, one in 37 people full participants in creating a safer, more stable are under correctional control. We incarcerate environment. Communities can thrive when we people at a rate of 698 per 100,000, more than dramatically reduce the footprint of criminal legal any other country in the world. If this population systems in people’s lives and work to end the cycle was its own state, according to the Prison Policy of racialized fear and punishment. Initiative, it “would be the 16th largest in the This report examines the way our criminal legal nation, comparable to the size of Massachusetts systems have driven up incarceration rates, or Tennessee.” People are also spending longer disproportionately harmed communities of color, periods of time under some kind of correctional control. Between 2000 and 2014, the amount and failed to provide true public safety. BUILDING SAFE, THRIVING COMMUNITIES: RESEARCH-BASED STRATEGIES FOR PUBLIC SAFETY 3 of time served behind bars rose by an average The Detrimental Efects of around fve years, and probation terms are similarly long: Many states allow terms of fve of Incarceration and Law years and in some states, the term of supervision Enforcement Practices can be as long as the original sentence, up to 10-20 years. All of this imprisonment comes with a hefty SENTENCING AND INCARCERATION price tag for taxpayers at over $80 billion a year. The United States leads the world in incarceration Our spending on law enforcement has similarly and increased sentence lengths. This, combined skyrocketed. State and local police spending with strict limits on early release opportunities, jumped from $2 billion in 1960 to $137 billion has caused the prison population to increase in 2018. But we have little evidence to evaluate exponentially. While crime has declined the efectiveness of how these dollars are spent. dramatically since the early 1990s, and violent Research illustrates that neither our reliance on crime continues to decrease in many of our incarceration nor policing has been the driving largest cities, an explosion in extreme sentences factor behind lower crime rates. (including life sentences, along with truth-in- Indeed, we are learning that the investments sentencing laws, mandatory minimums, and we have made in policing, prosecuting, and three-strikes laws) have left our jails and prisons incarcerating people have generated substantial overfowing with people who would be far better collateral consequences without meaningfully of living freely than they are behind bars. benefting community safety or addressing the Ending over-incarceration and developing a more challenges that led to criminal legal system dignifed, humane, and sensible system requires a involvement. Many of those who are incarcerated new approach to criminal sentencing practices. for violent crimes sufered from “lifetimes of Reforms to the criminal legal system have gained trauma” themselves long before they encountered traction nationwide, yet few mechanisms are in the criminal legal system, and our systems place to permit those already serving time to be of punishment and imprisonment have only released upon rehabilitation. The system keeps perpetuated that cycle of violence. Moreover, the people in prison despite clear evidence they disproportionate burden of these consequences have been rehabilitated, and locks them up as has consistently fallen on communities of color, they age even though criminal behavior drops and Black communities in particular. This dramatically once people reach their thirties should be unsurprising, as many of our criminal and then continues to decline. The result is that legal
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