Justice Reinvestment

Project Status: Active
Project Contact: Marshall Clement (mclement@csg.org)
Project Website: www.justicereinvestment.org

Project Documents:

Connecticut
Building Bridges: From Conviction to Employment (pdf)
Building Bridges: From Conviction to Employment - One Year Later (pdf)
Bill Summary of HB 5211, "An Act Concerning Prison Overcrowding," Enacted in 2004 (pdf)
Bill Text of HB 6976, "Criminal Justice Planning," Enacted in 2005 (pdf)

Kansas
Building Community Capacity to Reduce Crime and Save Prison Space (pdf)
Overview of Prisoner Re-Entry and Justice Reinvestment in Kansas (pdf)

Louisiana
Options for Policymakers Considering a Justice Reinvestment Initiative in Louisiana (pdf)

Rhode Island
Increasing Public Safety and Generating Savings: Options for Rhode Island Policymakers - Report Summary (pdf)

Project Overview

In every state, there are a handful of “high stakes” communities. Here, government, through significant investments in efforts to combat unemployment, sickness, drug abuse, homelessness, and the disintegration of families has much to gain – and much to lose. Among residents, even more is at stake: hope. Programs come and go that fail to make a difference, further eroding residents’ faith that their situation could change. In addition, these high stakes communities face the added challenge of receiving a disproportionate share of people released from prison and jail. Justice Reinvestment is a strategy to capitalize on the increasing numbers of people returning from prison and jail as an opportunity to make these communities safer, stronger, and healthier.

An Innovative Response

To assist state policymakers, the Council of State Governments (CSG), through funding support provided from private foundations and the U.S. Department of Justice, is providing technical assistance to a limited number of states that demonstrate a bipartisan interest in justice reinvestment. These states are designing policies to manage the growth of the corrections system, improve the accountability and integration of resources concentrated in particular communities, and reinvest a portion of the savings generated from these efforts to make communities receiving the majority of people released from prison safer, stronger, and healthier.

Identifying Opportunities to Cut Spending

Analyzing correctional data, CSG’s experts can provide policymakers with data-driven explanations of why their prison population is growing and where opportunities may exist to reduce recidivism and increase public safety. In addition, CSG’s experts can conduct geographic analyses of neighborhoods receiving large numbers of people returning from prison. State governments can use this information to generate savings, giving them the financial flexibility to both support other policy priorities as well as reinvest funds in the target communities to make them safer, stronger, and healthier.

Improving Accountability
State and community agencies provide services in the same neighborhoods, and often the same families, but their reports to policymakers are more likely to describe the outputs of the agency rather than the outcomes of the community or family. For example, geographical analyses of prison admissions, food stamp recipients, families on temporary assistance, and individuals receiving unemployment insurance within urban neighborhoods reveal extraordinary overlap. These compounded investments, however, remain uncoordinated in program “silos” and, as a result, fail to achieve better outcomes. A justice reinvestment strategy coordinates programs, blends funding, and establishes common performance measures to provide policymakers and taxpayers with a clear picture of what they are getting for their money.

Reinvesting in Safer Communities
Reinvesting cost savings into key communities can further enhance community safety and continue to ease the pressure on correctional populations. When people are released from prison or jail, their success depends, in part, on the capacity of the community to foster their reintegration. Reinvesting funds in a particular community can leverage additional resources to increase a community’s capacity in the areas of housing, employment, or substance abuse services, all of which are needed for successful prisoner re-entry.

Recent Developments

Connecticut
In 2004, with nearly unanimous support in the legislature, the state enacted laws to curb prison population growth, increase public safety and reinvest $14 million from the projected savings into community corrections and community-based pilot projects. Since the enactment of these measures, the state’s crime rate has continued to drop; no longer does the state have one of the nation’s fastest growing prison populations; the decline experienced over a two-year period was steeper than seen in almost any other state. In 2005, legislators established a Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division to provide policymakers with data to measure agencies’ performance and progress in reducing recidivism and to increase accountability in government agencies responsible for generating improved outcomes.

Kansas
An examination of the state’s criminal justice system highlighted policies that were “tough and smart,” but also found that the growing prison population was putting pressure on this framework. Two-thirds of all admissions are people who violated the conditions of their probation or parole, and people whose probation or parole is revoked spend on average less than six months in prison. Neither “tough nor smart,” these policies were translating into the use of costly and limited prison space as an intermediate sanction. The governor and legislature have established a statewide “Re-Entry Policy Council,” which will develop justice reinvestment strategies aimed at saving money, reducing revocations of probation and parole, and employing neighborhood-based initiatives to increase safety.

Additional States
The Council of State Governments is in the process of identifying other states to add to the limited number of jurisdictions receiving technical assistance to pursue justice reinvestment strategies.