Snyder: A new vision of how criminal JUSTICE might work

 Rachel Louise Snyder writes in The New York Times:

The avenues that lead women to jail tend to differ from those for men. Criminologists have long understood this. What happens with women is often a layering of trauma and abuse. They might have economic instability or mental health challenges that allow them to be exploited by violent partners. They might exchange sex for food or housing, and then get arrested for any number of infractions: prostitution, trespassing, drugs. The criminal-justice researcher Stephanie Kennedy calls these “crimes of survival.”

These avenues have contributed to shocking rates of incarceration for women: Between 1978 and 2015, the number of women in state prisons has grown by 834 percent. The overwhelming majority are primary caregivers. When a woman goes to prison, the downstream effects can be staggering: children might enter foster care, itself often a traumatic system. Aging parents might be put into subpar facilities, or have to find alternative care and housing. All too often, the cost of such upheaval results in a cycle of crime, incarceration, addiction, poverty and broken families.

Courts have long struggled with how to respond. The question is: Can we create a system of justice that looks wholly different from what most of us imagine when it comes to crime and punishment, while still demanding accountability from perpetrators? What if court were a place that afforded someone the opportunity for a complete reset, with entryways to jobs, housing, education? What if instead of punishing people who’ve been broken many times over, we helped to heal them?

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Bail reform being dismantled across the country

According to the  Marshal Project, in 2021 the Illinois' legislature passed a bill abolishing cash bail and replacing it with a system in which prosecutors can seek detention based on public-safety or flight-risk findings. At the time, the rationale for the change was largely built on questioning the logic of wealth-based detention. Commenters argued that a rich person should not have a special right to leave jail compared to a poorer person accused of the same crime.

Earlier this month, after the killing of a Chicago police officer whose alleged shooter had been released on electronic monitoring while awaiting trial in another case, Republican lawmakers renewed calls to change the law, arguing in part that the state needed to come into line with President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting “cashless bail.” But the plans that have been floated have not sought to restore money bail, but rather proposed new means of revoking pretrial release, or creating a presumption of detention for people with violent convictions.

Similar legislative efforts to increase pretrial detention outright have also gained momentum across the country. In New Hampshire, a rollback of the state’s earlier bail reforms lowered the standard prosecutors must meet to deny bail, and state officials have pointed to rising jail populations as proof the new approach is working. Later this month, voters in Alabama will decide whether to expand the list of charges for which judges can deny bail. Similarly, in November, voters in Indiana will vote on a constitutional amendment that would dramatically expand judges’ ability to hold people pretrial if they determine that no conditions of release could reasonably protect public safety.

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American prisons are fast becoming the world’s worst nursing homes

 German Lopez writing in The New York Times:

American prisons are fast becoming the world’s worst nursing homes, increasingly filled with aging criminals who can barely walk, let alone commit another crime. The idea that we should lock up people for life, even through old age, is often framed as being tough on crime. In reality, it gives years, if not decades, of shelter, food and health care to convicted criminals and redirects money from programs we know do a better job of protecting the public.

Older people are much less likely to commit crime than the young. They are also much more expensive to lock up. Federal prisons with the largest share of older prisoners spend five times as much per person on medical care and 14 times as much on medications as other facilities, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit advocacy group.

States and counties, which oversee a vast majority of people in prison, cannot run deficits for long or print money, as the federal government can. Every buck that pays for one thing means a dollar less for another. Funds spent on locking up an old inmate could have helped pay for more police officers or other anti-crime initiatives or schools or roads or any of the myriad other demands on local governments.

I have reported on criminal justice issues for more than a decade. If I have learned anything, it’s that crime policy is all about trade-offs, more so than in most other areas. Releasing more old people from prison, however, is close to a free lunch. Not only could it save money, but if the savings are wisely reinvested, it also could improve public safety.

America is heading in the opposite direction. Over the past three decades, the share of prisoners who are 55 or older has multiplied fivefold. Two trends have accelerated the phenomenon: First, young people are committing far less crime, so they are less likely to fill up prisons. Second, tough-on-crime trends led to more life sentences and other long prison penalties, and time is now taking its toll.

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The age-crime curve is the least-appreciated fact of criminal justice. If you chart a man’s likelihood to commit crime over his life, the line will hover near zero until he reaches his teens. Then his chance of committing a crime spikes, almost vertically, over the next decade. Nothing is more dangerous, in terms of crime, than a young man in his late teens or early 20s. But starting around his mid-20s, the line starts to drop. This continues for the rest of a typical man’s life. By the time he’s in his 50s, he is less likely to commit crime than he was as a young teenager.

Those trends are true for the general public. Do they apply to convicted criminals? Yes. One federal study tracked prison inmates after their release in 34 states. Nearly 57 percent of ex-inmates 24 or younger ended up back in prison within five years. Fewer than 15 percent of those 65 or older did. In other words, a vast majority of older inmates don’t reoffend.

On some level, we all recognize this. We know the brain doesn’t finish developing until a person’s mid-20s. Physicality matters, too. As a teenager, I could fall out of a tree, get back up and sprint after my friends without feeling a thing. Now, in my mid-30s, I feel my back hurting for days if I make a wrong turn picking up my cat. Crime follows the same facts of life. The kind of poor judgment that leads someone to commit more crime is more common among the young, and so is the physical ability to make good on that poor judgment.

Outliers do exist. But a vast majority of killers are not serial killers, and a vast majority of criminals are not lifelong offenders. Many criminals, maybe even most, committed a crime under the particular circumstances of their age and the moment. Keeping criminals locked up when they’re young absolutely can stop crime. Older inmates, however, pose little threat to the rest of us.

Supporters of the status quo raise two counterarguments: First, people who commit heinous crimes deserve to remain in prison, no matter their age, to demonstrate society’s moral condemnation. Second, long prison sentences, including those that last through old age and death, are good because they deter others from committing crimes.

The first counterargument is about values. I would argue that criminal justice policies should prioritize protecting the public over retribution. We don’t need to turn prisons into nursing homes to show our disapproval of a crime; decades-long prison sentences do a good enough job. But reasonable people can disagree.

The second counterargument, however, is simply wrong. A thorough review of the research found that longer prison sentences’ deterrence effect is “mild or zero.” As part of his analysis, the researcher, David Roodman, tried to replicate prominent studies that claimed evidence of long sentences deterring criminals. He found they contained serious problems that skewed their conclusions. All told, threatening to lock up people until their late 50s, 60s and beyond does little for public safety.

Lawmakers should address this problem with available policies: Governors should issue pardons for older inmates. Parole boards should put more weight on age. Officials should more aggressively use compassionate release laws that on a limited basis let out inmates who are ill. But lawmakers should go further. They should enact laws that require courts to revisit sentences after, say, 20 years. They should grant inmates the presumption of parole in more cases, meaning a parole board would keep a person locked up only with good reason. Broader reform should reduce the use of longer sentences in general.

Some caution is warranted. People deemed dangerous — the criminal justice system has ways of gauging that risk — should not be let out. Policies might exclude certain kinds of crimes.

With the savings from releases, lawmakers could pay for more effective approaches to public safety. Experts often say the United States is overincarcerated and underpoliced, particularly for violent crime. Police departments across the country have reported serious staffing shortages for years, and we know that having fewer officers around leads to more crime. These shortages are one reason nearly half of America’s murderers now get away with it.

You don’t have to mourn an older killer’s lifelong suffering in prison to think reform is a good idea. You can just think, as I do, that the criminal justice system should protect Americans as efficiently and effectively as possible. Paying for the housing, food and health care of someone unlikely to commit a crime should not make the cut.

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Budget cuts cause chaos for criminal justice practitioners

 From The Marshall Project:

The cuts have caused chaos in criminal justice grantmaking, creating a perception that the process is increasingly aligned with President Donald Trump and the Project 2025 agenda — even as some decisions contradict the administration’s own stated goals.

“We have seen the Department of Justice weaponized to be in service of President Trump's political agenda and weaponized to go after his opponents and critics and enemies,” Insha Rahman, vice president of advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice, said.

DOJ funding under the second Trump administration now serves the president’s agenda of mass deportation and a “law and order” approach to reducing crime, Rahman said. The DOJ terminated $5 million in outstanding funds to Vera, who, for 64 years, has run on a platform of criminal justice reform achieved by research. Rahman said the nonprofit had unwavering support from the federal government in the past. Now, Vera is among those organizations that sued to reinstate the funding.

In addition to grassroots anti-violence nonprofits, local police departments, prosecutors and courts, state departments of corrections, national criminal justice nonprofits and researchers had to pause or scale back programs, find other sources of funding, leave positions open or lay off staff. Equal Justice USA (EJUSA), a national nonprofit whose work included funding grassroots organizations supporting victims of violent crime or working to prevent violence also shut down.

“The opportunity to support a President’s agenda may be greater through OJP grant funding than it is through any of the federal government’s other grant-making components,” Gene Hamilton, a DOJ official during Trump’s first administration, wrote in the chapter about the department in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership.

Since its creation in 1984, OJP has aimed to make the federal government a major supporter of state and local governments’ efforts to reduce crime, often through research, evaluation and development — and grants to encourage new programs, or to support promising models. The office is responsible for grants that transfer billions of federal dollars to state and local agencies making up the criminal justice system, as well as research and nonprofit organizations.

OJP provides site-based grants, which fund local governments or nonprofits to implement programs in particular places, research grants to study the effectiveness of programs, as well as training and technical assistance grants that share expertise to help local programs best use their funding. Training and technical assistance grants, often to national nonprofits like EJUSA or Vera, were the hardest hit in the April cuts. They accounted for more than $578 million in original funds, the Council on Criminal Justice found.

The Justice Department told grant recipients that were terminated that their work “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” A termination letter reviewed by The Marshall Project said the department was focusing on direct support and coordination for law enforcement, “combatting violent crime”, “protecting American children,” and supporting victims of trafficking and sexual assault.

However, many of the grant cuts were in these areas. While police departments were not the primary recipients of terminated grants, the Justice Department ended grants aimed at supporting police. The department ended a grant that expanded police officer safety wellness training as part of a broader police mental health and wellness initiative. It also terminated a training and technical assistance grant to help rural law enforcement agencies implement plans to reduce violence. Beyond technical assistance, that grant also funded a few small, focused agency programs to confront violent crime problems.

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Mixed views on closing two Pennsylvania prisons in neighboring counties

What has turned out to be one of the more controversial pieces of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s 2025-2026 budget proposal was never mentioned during his 90-plus minute speech laying out the spending plan this past week, according to the Pennsylvania Capital Star.

In budget documents, the governor proposed closing two Pennsylvania prisons, which his office says could save the state $100 million per year. He also proposed closing two community corrections centers for another $10 million in annual savings. The Shapiro administration has said falling incarceration rates in Pennsylvania make the closures possible. 

But the proposal has drawn varied reactions. The prison guards’ union has come out strongly against it, though the Department of Corrections said in an email to employees that all current workers would be able to hold on to a job with the same pay if they choose. Advocates for prisoners in Pennsylvanians have expressed cautious optimism that the move could improve lives in prisons, depending on how it’s done. And some lawmakers who represent districts with prisons in them have expressed concern about the economic impacts on nearby communities. 

The Department of Corrections says the specific facilities have yet to be chosen based on the recommendation of a “steering committee.”

‘Depends on how it’s executed’

Whether or not the move improves conditions for inmates by increasing access to rehabilitative programming and avoiding overcrowding in part depends on the durability of the trend of decreasing incarceration, as well as how the prisons slated for closure are chosen. How the plan is enacted could also have major impacts on communities with economies that rely on those prisons.

“Anything depends on how it’s executed,” said Claire Shubik-Richards, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, a nonprofit that offers support services for incarcerated Pennsylvanians and their families, including prison monitoring, transportation for visitation and mentoring. 

In theory, Shubik-Richards approves of the idea to close the prisons.

“Most states, including Pennsylvania, have seen the footprint of their state prison population shrink,” Shubik-Richards said. “So this is really, I would say, belatedly keeping with a national trend.”

Both locally and nationally, prison populations have fallen since the COVID-19 pandemic saw many non-violent offenders released over health concerns. And the lower incarceration numbers have stuck. That’s led states like Illinois and New York to close prisons in the last few years.

In Pennsylvania, the state’s 23 prisons collectively hovered around 100% capacity before the pandemic, with some individual facilities overfilled. But the latest state Department of Corrections monthly population report paints a different picture, with facilities operating at just over 82% capacity. According to the Department of Corrections, there are more than 37,000 people in the state’s 23 prisons and one boot camp on any given day, and monthly reports show that number is often higher by thousands.

Jill McCorkel, a professor of criminology and sociology at Villanova University, said this is in part because of releases during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also because of a bipartisan trend of support for legislation rolling back war-on-drugs era policies that started to stem incarceration rates in the late 2000s and 2010s.

At the time, America’s prison population was growing explosively, and increasingly costing taxpayers. Ethical and cost concerns brought together lawmakers and advocates on both the left and the right. Groups as disparate as Americans For Prosperity, a political advocacy group funded by The Koch brothers, and the American Civil Liberties Union can often still find common cause pushing laws intended to reduce mandatory sentencing laws around the country that were born out of the crackdown on drug use in the 1980s.

Shubik-Richards said she believes the lower incarceration numbers are here to stay, barring a “large external shock.”

But there are other considerations the Department of Corrections and the governor should take into account, she said. Right now, most Pennsylvania prisons are facing a severe shortage of reintegration-focused programs, whether those are educational, vocational or dealing with mental health and substance abuse issues. Consolidating staff at fewer facilities, Shubik-Richards said, could be one way to improve the situation. But that will depend in part on how many specialized staff can be retained.

And importantly, one of the best predictors of post-incarceration success for inmates is whether or not their families are able to visit them behind bars according to Shubik-Richards and other advocates. Numerous academic studies support a small to moderate reduction in recidivism associated with family visitation. Shubik-Richards wants any decision on which facilities to close to take into account the population centers where detainees are coming from. 

Philadelphia and Allegheny County residents make up the largest share of the state’s prison population.

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No correlation between violent crime and criminal justice reform

 Radley Balko writes in The Watch:

There is very little evidence that criminal justice reforms or progressive prosecutors are responsible for the spike in violent crime. Multiple studies have found no correlation between reform and crime rates at all, and as far as I know just one study claimed to find a correlation between progressive prosecutors and a slight uptick property crime — but no link to violent crime.

But the more obvious reason to doubt any link is that between 2020 and roughly 2022 violent crime also went up everywhere, including in jurisdictions with traditional, law-and-order prosecutors. It then went on a steep, nationwide decline in 2022. That, too, has been a nationwide trend, including in jurisdictions that passed and sustained reforms, as well as those that retained progressive prosecutors.

But the narrative appears to be immune to data. The most high-profile loss last week in Los Angeles, where voters ousted district attorney George Gascón, one of the more well-known names in the progressive prosecutor movement. Gascón faced a revolt the moment he took office, as the prosecutors’ union went to court to get an injunction barring him from implementing reforms — reforms clearly supported by voters at the time — by arguing that they violated the rights of prosecutors. (That’s a hell of a sentence to write.) And they won.

Gascón then faced over two dozen more lawsuits from holdover prosecutors. They accused him of retaliation for publicly criticizing him, and of interfering with their cases by imposing the policies he was elected to implement. I can’t speak to the merit of specific accusations, but as someone who has been watching this stuff for 20 years, I can say that a reform-minded line prosecutor who publicly criticized a traditional DA the way these prosecutors went after Gascón would be fired in a heartbeat. L.A. prosecutors seem to think their “right” to implement carceral policies supersedes the will of the people they serve. And unfortunately, the courts seemed to agree, as some of these prosecutors won six and seven-figure awards. Still, Gascón survived two recall attempts before finally losing last week.

California voters also passed a ballot initiative to increase penalties for some drug crimes, and to allow felony charges for repeat low level theft offenders — a response to the widely-distributed myth that a 2014 initiative had effectively “legalized” shoplifting in the state. The state’s voters even rejected a ban on forced labor of incarcerated people.

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Lawmakers nationwide rolling back criminal justice reform

California, once a leader in finding ways to lock up fewer people by lowering sentences for some drug and property crimes, is now considering reversing course. And it is not alone. Lawmakers across the country have rolled back reforms meant to decrease reliance on police and prisons, even though data suggests that crime rates are broadly trending down, reported The Marshall Project.

In California, a new ballot initiative could toughen sentences for shoplifting and selling fentanyl. Earlier this year, Louisiana all but eliminated parole, expanded execution methods in capital cases and increased the time people spend behind bars. The changes came after a period of reform, during which the state shrank its prison population by a third. Kentucky also passed sweeping legislation that criminalizes sleeping in the streets, limits charitable bail organizations and prohibits probation and parole for some incarcerated people.

“This is a time of extraordinary political divisiveness. It's a time of economic confusion and upheaval. It's a time where, frankly, we're still recovering from the significant social impacts of COVID,” said Lenore Anderson, co-founder and president of Alliance for Safety and Justice, which advocates for community-based approaches to safety. “When things around us start to feel more like quicksand, voters get nervous about everything, right? And crime is among the things.”

This article was published in partnership with USA Today.

In other states, recently enacted reforms are holding up, but in moments of uncertainty like these, Anderson said politicians often reach for old playbooks and “tough-on-crime” messages. That is what she sees playing out in California, where Proposition 36, a measure on the November ballot, would roll back parts of Proposition 47, a decade-old law that downgraded some drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, among other reforms.

The law played a big part in driving down mass incarceration in the state and addressing chronic overcrowding. But Anderson argues it did something else that voters want to see: It improved public safety by investing money previously spent on incarceration in drug treatment, prevention, mental health care and victim services.

One lesson those advocating reform should learn, she said, is that it’s urgent to discuss how changes can improve public safety. “We have to not only talk about safety — we need to lead with it,” Anderson said.

The news in many places has been dominated by a narrative of out-of-control crime, featuring videos of coordinated shoplifting or stories about people who repeatedly commit crimes and don’t remain behind bars.

Despite those portrayals, the data paints a much more nuanced picture, and violent crime is trending down. But researchers at Vera Action, an organization working to end mass incarceration, argue that focusing on statistics isn’t convincing for many voters.

Brian Tashman, deputy director at Vera Action, said if people who have witnessed or experienced violence feel unsafe, citing data about dropping crime rates can make them feel unheard or misunderstood. Instead of messages about “dropping crime” and increased funding for police, Vera’s polling suggests voters want to hear about new approaches to safety that don’t increase incarceration, like improved access to schools, jobs and housing.

The polling indicates voters are more open to approaches that emphasize prevention than traditional “tough-on-crime” policies like harsh sentences.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that efforts to undo criminal justice reforms in California have been led by Republicans and funded by large retailers like Target and Walmart. But some Democrats are also throwing their support behind the rollbacks, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who did not return a request for comment.

Anderson, of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, said she believes elected officials like Breed are afraid of being attacked as “soft on crime,” a strategy that has been effective in the past. In a report focusing on California, Vera Action researchers wrote that California Democrats lag behind Republicans in voter trust on crime and safety. But, they argue, the “confidence gap” can be narrowed by discussing how progressive policies improve safety and security. “It’s the silence that’s deadly,” they wrote. The study pointed to Illinois as an example of a state where reformers successfully owned the issue of safety, without returning to “tough-on-crime” tactics.

In 2021, Illinois state Sen. Robert Peters stood behind Gov. J.B. Pritzker as he signed a historic law that made Illinois the first state in the nation to completely eliminate cash bail — so that no one would be in jail awaiting trial because they didn’t have enough money. It was supposed to be a day of celebration, but he remembers bracing himself for backlash.

Peters is a student of history, and knew about the backlash that came after the civil rights movement. He’d seen more recent examples, too. In 2019, New York passed a law limiting, but not abolishing, the use of cash bail. Politicians immediately faced negative media coverage. Within weeks after the law went into effect, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo was saying the law would need to be adjusted. And politicians soon expanded the number of crimes that would allow a judge to assign cash bail.

The attacks Peters feared did eventually come in Illinois. Campaign ads connected to Republican operative Dan Proft, deceptively designed to look like newspapers, attacked supporters of the reforms for ushering in the “end of days” and “murder, mayhem.”

But as the attacks flew, Illinois organizations that advocate for the rights of victims and survivors of violence voiced their support for the reforms. Groups working to end domestic and sexualized violence, like the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, had been deeply involved in shaping the law. The same bill that ended cash bail also included increased access to funding for victims of crime, more opportunities to file for protective orders and a requirement that prosecutors notify survivors about pretrial hearings.

“We’re finally going to have a system that centers survivors more and takes the time to review their cases, hear back from them, notify them about what the circumstances are of their cases, or what decisions are being made and how they can contribute,” Madeleine Behr of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation told The Chicago Sun-Times just before the elimination of cash bail went into effect in 2023.

A coalition of organizations supporting the law, which included violence prevention organizations like Mothers/Men Against Senseless Killings, pointed to a study that showed, despite fears of spikes in violence, a decreased use of cash bail in Cook County had no statistical effect on crime. But they went beyond numbers, and also argued that when people are held in jail because they can’t afford bail, they risk losing their jobs, housing, health care and family connections. That kind of destabilization makes communities less safe, they argued, but eliminating cash bail would make it easier to maintain stability and security.

Politicians in the state, from Pritzker on down, stood by the law. The reforms remained in place, and despite attacks, the politicians who supported it kept their jobs. Lawmakers have since expanded the law by investing additional funds in mental health treatment, child care and transportation for defendants awaiting trial.

Peters, the Democratic state lawmaker, said the involvement of survivor organizations has been critical because it’s hard to attack a law for being “soft on crime” when victims and survivors are loudly arguing that it makes them safer.

Zoë Towns, executive director at FWD.us, a bipartisan organization advocating for reforms in criminal justice and immigration, said talking about how progressive criminal justice policies improve safety and assist survivors isn’t new. But in recent years there has been greater emphasis from politicians and activists in communicating that the country doesn’t have to choose between safety and justice. “These are two sides of the same coin. You have to be thinking about them together,” Towns said.

There are also plenty of reforms that are holding strong, Towns added. In moderate and conservative places like Lincoln, Nebraska, and Jacksonville, Florida, candidates who promoted justice reforms have weathered attacks that they were soft on crime. Missouri passed a law allowing recreational marijuana use and expungement of past offenses, which remains in place and is helping to fund drug treatment and legal services. And in Mississippi, a state dominated by conservatives, lawmakers recently extended a measure allowing increased parole eligibility, so more people can get released from prison.

Rafael Mangual, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, pointed out that many reforms remain in place despite attempts at rollbacks. But Mangual doesn’t believe the enduring reforms are a reflection of what voters actually want, and he said he was skeptical that progressives could own the issue of safety. He thinks voters will ultimately decide against experiments limiting cash bail and decreasing the use of police and prisons. Mangual pointed to the current ballot initiative in California as one sign of that tendency.

But Anderson of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which has backed reforms in California and Illinois, said she still thinks the California reforms have a chance of being upheld. She said that, as in Illinois, the way the law addresses safety and crime victims is key. For example, Proposition 47 reallocated money from prisons to victim support groups.

“We can't just sort of say okay, we're going to reduce incarceration. Everything will be fine. That's not the end goal. The end goal is a transformed approach to public safety,” Anderson said.

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In 2023 cities experienced the largest single-year decline in violent crime since the FBI began keeping track

 In 2021, Detroit was in trouble.

The city, which already had one of the highest murder rates in the country, was experiencing a surge in gun violence coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic. In the first five months of the year, homicides were up 27 percent, and nonfatal shootings were up 44 percent, reported Vox.

James White, who was Detroit’s assistant police chief from 2012 to 2020, had only been retired from the department for a year when he got the call to return, this time as chief of police, in June 2021. When he came back, he said, “policing had completely changed.”

“It was on the heels of the George Floyd murder, it was the pandemic — all those things kind of intersected,” White told Vox. It wasn’t just Detroit: Homicide spiked 30 percent across the US in 2020, the largest single-year increase since the FBI began tracking it. “We found ourselves [facing] a really big question, and rightly so, about the validity of policing and the model of policing that was happening around the country.”

Three years into his time as chief, White and others in the community have much to celebrate. At the end of 2023, the city reported the fewest homicides since 1966, a decline of 18 percent over the previous year. Nonfatal shootings fell nearly 16 percent, and carjackings dropped by a third. By the end of 2023, the city’s homicide rate had returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Detroit is on the leading edge of a national trend. Across US cities last year, homicides fell more than 12 percent, the largest single-year decline in violent crime since the FBI began keeping track. In Buffalo, they fell 46 percent from a year earlier — the fewest homicides since 2011. In Philadelphia, they dropped 21 percent. New York and Los Angeles also saw double-digit declines, according to preliminary data.

What explains the precipitous rise — and sharp fall — in violent crime? Experts caution that several complex, intersecting factors drive crime trends, and no single explanation can easily answer the question.

The best working theory is that multiple overlapping social crises — including pandemic-related disruptions that kept more people stuck at home and out of work, and the unrest across major cities after the murder of George Floyd — contributed to a breakdown of trust between the public and police, and created conditions ripe for violence in a country awash in too many guns.

The decrease, meanwhile, may have much to do with society reopening and stabilizing, but it also probably has something to do with changes to the way some police, prosecutors, and civic leaders — in Detroit and elsewhere — have been operating after the major challenges of 2020.

For Detroit, what worked was a coordinated effort across multiple agencies and community organizations that was targeted at reducing and preventing gun crime and mobilizing the judicial system after a pandemic-era shutdown seriously hampered the courts.

That’s not to say Detroit, like other cities in the US, doesn’t face severe challenges when it comes to reducing violent crime. Though the city saw the fewest killings since 1966, it also had a much larger population back then, meaning 2023’s per capita homicide rate of around 41 people per 100,000 is much higher than the 1966 homicide rate of 15 people per 100,000.

Still, White says, elected officials and community leaders in Detroit are encouraged by the fact that homicide fell back to the pre-pandemic baselines. “We’re not satisfied,” White says, but there’s satisfaction in “knowing our plans are working.”

US President Joe Biden shakes hands with Detroit Police Chief James White in February in Washington. Biden met with White to tout Detroit’s efforts to reduce crime, including using federal funds to transform policing and community interventions. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

It’s not just the chief of police saying that, either. “I think our people are hardwired to be skeptical of any news that comes from top to bottom, like, is this a political ploy? Is it real?” says Alia Harvey-Quinn, the founder of FORCE Detroit, a community violence intervention program that is active in northwest Detroit and is part of the effort to reduce gun violence. “We’re hearing people actually feel safer as of late, and that’s exciting.”

Violent crime is continuing to fall across the US this year, but it’s still a major voter concern, driving politicians to pass laws aimed at reducing it further. Here’s how Detroit is reducing crime, and what other cities can learn from their success.

Detroit changed the way police respond to some calls

In 2020, in response to the murder of George Floyd, the city came up with plans for a Crisis Intervention Team, a partnership between mental and behavioral health specialists and police. The Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network (DWIHN) staffs 911 call centers with mental health professionals and offers week-long training programs for police officers to learn about trauma-informed policing. The network also partners with police on a centralized mental health unit co-response team, where officers are paired with behavioral health specialists who can respond to people experiencing mental health crises. DWIHN’s Andrea Smith, who has answered 911 calls and worked with the crisis response team on in-person calls, says the goal is always “to bring a situation down instead of contributing to an escalation of the crisis,” and to help officers find other ways of responding to certain calls.

The approach, modeled on methods first implemented by a team in Memphis, Tennessee, “contributes to a lower number of incidents of use of force,” says Smith. “It’s allowed us to have more of a focus on, ‘OK, this person might not have a behavior problem. It might be a behavioral health problem.’ … When you have the community that knows that the police are looking at alternatives to just pulling out their gun, that enhances or improves the relationship between the police and citizens.”

For White, who in addition to being police chief is also a licensed mental health counselor, paying attention to the mental health needs of community members makes sense, but it was far from the only strategy.

The city also unveiled a 12-point “summer surge” plan that increased police presence, curfew enforcement, and strategic traffic restrictions to secure downtown Detroit following the murder of a security guard last year. Police also cracked down on drag racing and stepped up their presence at community events where they had reason to believe there might be a risk of gun violence.

The city council also approved a contract that gave officers a roughly $10,000 raise at the end of 2022 to help offset the recruiting problem other police departments are also facing across the country. White was careful to point out, though, that the work is far from over: “The challenge is to continue to drive down violent crime while providing policing excellence to our community and treating everyone fairly,” he says.

Prosecutors made community outreach a key priority

Courts across the country shut down because of Covid-19, delaying trials and preventing felony charges from moving through the adjudication process.

To get the system moving again and to reduce the backlog of felony gun cases, district and circuit courts moved to get more hearings on the calendar. The US attorney for Eastern Michigan, Dawn Ison, also partnered with federal agencies to prosecute gun crimes and take illegal weapons off the street.

Ison also led violence prevention and reentry efforts for formerly incarcerated people.

“The studies show enforcement alone has never been effective at moving the needle to reduce violent crime. We have to be transparent and bring legitimacy. We can’t do this work without the community,” Ison says.

When developing One Detroit, her office’s program to reduce violence in the two city precincts with the highest rates of gun crime, Ison drew upon several evidence-based strategies outlined in the book Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence—and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets by Thomas Abt, founding director of the Violence Reduction Center at the University of Maryland.

This included reaching out last summer to 200 individuals who, based on their previous interaction with the state’s legal system, were believed to be at highest risk of becoming a victim of, or perpetrating, gun violence. They were invited to a roundtable to hear from people who’d been incarcerated in an effort to deter them from violence.

Ison’s office also focused on engagement with the city’s residents. In the summer, she goes into the precincts with high rates of gun crime and hands out fliers letting the public know that her office is looking to prosecute the small number of people driving most of the gun violence in the city.

The office also puts on what they call “peacenics,” or summer block parties with DJs, bounce castles, and vendors from the city and local government who help people with basic services, like getting a driver’s license or having their record expunged for low-level offenses.

“My vision is for it to be our non-enforcement engagement with the community,” Ison says. “We have to be talking to them, and not only there when we’re kicking in their doors or arresting somebody.” By the end of 2023, the city reported that homicides were down 17 percent in the precincts targeted by One Detroit, and carjackings were down 63 percent.

Ison isn’t the only prosecutor focusing on violent crime reduction. At the direction of the Office of the Attorney General, each US attorney was asked to come up with their own district-specific violence reduction plan in response to the pandemic-related spike. But Thomas Abt says that the energy Ison brings to the effort is unusual. “The US attorney and Chief White are demonstrating an exciting new form of collaborative leadership,” Abt says. “They’re people who can celebrate the successes of others. I think that’s really positive and constructive.”

Detroit invested in community violence interruption

Detroit received $826 million through the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021, and in 2023, the city allocated a small slice of the money to a handful of community-based programs working to reduce gun violence in the neighborhoods that suffered from it the most. One of those programs is FORCE Detroit, which works on the west side of Detroit in a neighborhood that saw a significant reduction in gun violence last year.

“Our goal is to create peace, so we’re dealing with people on multiple sides of conflict,” says Harvey-Quinn, the group’s founder. “They understand that our space is a neutral zone.”

Since FORCE has begun its work, she says, the group has had at least 87 instances of intervention or deescalation. Those incidents range from getting someone to take down a threat made on social media before it escalates into violence to convening rival gang members and saying, “Let’s sit everyone down, and as long as people don’t want to go to prison, or die, there has to be a solution.”

Mostly, it’s about connecting young people with credible messengers who have served time and lost friends to gun violence and are now trained by her organization in deescalation and crisis mitigation strategies.

FORCE Detroit was touted by city leaders when the neighborhood they serve saw no homicides between November 2023 and January 2024.

“We’re working with the people who shoot guns, and we’re encouraging them not to,” Harvey-Quinn says.

“Statistically, less than 2 percent of our community is ever going to shoot a gun.” By designing programs focused on meeting that 2 percent in their own neighborhoods, she says, “you have a real opportunity to deeply impact them. It really matters whether or not they get the good, wraparound services. It really matters that they have mentors that care.”

With polls showing that voters think of crime as a major concern this election year, political leaders are looking to show that they’re serious about reducing it. If they’re interested in what reduces crime, they should look at what worked in Detroit. It wasn’t the “tough on crime” approach that so many leaders are now pursuing as a too-late reaction to the crime surge of 2020 and 2021.

Detroit succeeded by thinking creatively, working cooperatively, and asking the city’s residents to partner with them in the effort. City leaders demonstrated that they were willing to offer resources to help, even as they acknowledge there’s so much more work to be done. It’s a strategy designed for long-term improvement, not election-year grandstanding.

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Virginia governor vetoed assault weapons ban, but signed a couple modest reforms

Gov. Glenn Youngkin has vetoed an assault weapons ban and a slate of other gun-control bills passed by the Virginia General Assembly, but he signed a pair of firearm-related measures into law: One bans a device that turns a semiautomatic firearm into a machine gun, and the other allows a parent or guardian to be charged with a felony for allowing a child who has been deemed a threat to have access to a gun, reported the Washington Post.

“I am pleased to sign … public safety bills which are commonsense reforms with significant bipartisan support from the General Assembly,” Youngkin (R) said in a written statement.

Youngkin had not been tested on firearm-related legislation in the first two years of his administration, when Republicans controlled the House of Delegates and prevented all gun-control measures from advancing. This year, with Democrats holding majorities in both the House and the Senate, lawmakers sent over numerous bills that put him on the spot. Youngkin had cast himself as a pro-Second Amendment patriot in his campaign for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in 2021. But he also refused to answer a National Rifle Association questionnaire and downplayed guns as he wooed suburban voters who tend to support some gun control.

Youngkin’s limits were clear, though, in the batch of 30 vetoes announced Tuesday, which included an assault weapons ban and a measure to close the “boyfriend loophole” to prevent someone in a domestic relationship who is subject to a restraining order from gaining access to a firearm.

The actions bring Youngkin’s total vetoes so far this session to 80 — nearing the record set by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) of 120 vetoes in a four-year term. With more than 1,000 bills sent to his desk when the General Assembly wrapped up March 9, Youngkin is on pace to set a new mark for rejections.

The two bills he signed were not opposed by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a prominent gun rights group, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“He should have signed all the other bills to keep our children and our loved ones free from firearms violence,” said Lori Haas, one of Richmond’s most vocal gun-control advocates since her daughter was injured in the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech.

The two Democrats who sponsored identical House and Senate versions of bills to hold guardians accountable for juvenile gun crimes praised Youngkin for signing the measure, which they call “Lucia’s Law” after Lucia Bremer, a 13-year-old girl in Henrico County who was gunned down by a 14-year-old boy in 2021.

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Cash bail is a sanction for poverty

On any given day, approximately 514,000 people are held in local jails across the United States. Though defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, more than 80% of the jail population are awaiting trial and have yet to be convicted of a crime, reported the Reason Foundation. Defendants accused of particularly serious violent crimes or who pose a credible threat to public safety may be detained in jail while awaiting trial. However, most defendants are entitled to pretrial release. Judges may impose conditions on a defendant’s release, such as electronic monitoring or supervision through a pretrial services agency.

Monetary release conditions, commonly referred to as “cash bail” or “money bail,” are among the most common types of pretrial release conditions in the United States. Cash bail allows defendants to secure their release by depositing a specified amount of money with the court as collateral, providing a financial incentive for compliance during the pretrial phase. If a defendant appears as required through the disposition of their case, the bail amount is returned to them. If a defendant fails to appear in court as required, the bail amount is forfeited, and the defendant may face additional criminal charges or penalties.

Cash bail was historically intended to provide a financial incentive for defendants to show up at required court dates, but reforms adopted in the 1970s and 1980s allow judges to also consider potential risks to public safety when making bail decisions. Under the right circumstances, cash bail is an appropriate tool for ensuring defendants cooperate throughout the pretrial period. However, many defendants cannot afford the cost of bail and are consequently detained for no reason other than their inability to pay.

Recent research suggests that bail decisions can result in defendants losing their jobs, coerce defendants into accepting plea bargains, and increase the probability that defendants are convicted. Given the potential negative consequences of pretrial detention resulting from an inability to afford cash bail, reform advocates have suggested limiting the use of monetary release conditions. Reforms to pretrial policy require policymakers to balance several competing interests, many of which are difficult to quantify. For example, it is not possible to quantify the normative value of the presumption of innocence or American’s Constitutional right to reasonable bail. However, research evidence can shed some light on the efficacy of cash bail for ensuring compliance during the pretrial period.

With some caveats, the studies included in this review collectively suggest that monetary release conditions like cash bail do not consistently improve court attendance and may not result in net crime reduction. Other factors, including indigence, drug use disorders, and criminal history, are generally stronger predictors of court attendance than the imposition of monetary release conditions. Conservatively, we can conclude that the United States relies too heavily on monetary release conditions. The bulk of available evidence suggests that curtailing the use of monetary release conditions among low-risk defendants would not result in dramatic drops in court attendance or increased risk of reoffending. There is even some evidence that pretrial reforms that reduce detention of low-risk, bond-eligible defendants may actually improve public safety. Additional research is needed to evaluate more ambitious reform proposals.

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DC mayor backs off criminal justice reform as violence soars

 D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser plans to propose anti-crime measures  that would loosen some reforms enacted after the police killing of George Floyd, reported Axios.

Why it matters: In the heat of a crime wave, it would mark a U-turn for the Democratic city on policing reform, likely pitting Bowser against progressive council members.

Driving the news: Bowser's forthcoming bill would empower police to declare "drug-free zones" across the city for five-day spans, according to a preview of the legislation obtained by Axios. The measure is an effort to outlaw congregating in public spaces for the "purchase, sale, or use of illegal drugs."

Retail theft would carry stiffer penalties, via a new crime for "directing organized retail theft."

Wearing a mask while committing a crime would be outlawed again.

The legislation also revises the definition of a police chokehold. It would clarify the "distinction between a serious use of force and incidental contact with the neck," according to the preview text.

Bowser's office declined to comment on the new legislation ahead of the announcement.

Context: D.C. repealed its anti-mask law — which bans wearing a mask to commit a crime, intimidate, or threaten people, or cause fear — in the post-George Floyd reforms.

Meanwhile, President Biden earlier this year vetoed an attempt by congressional Republicans to ease the city's chokehold ban. (Police chokeholds were made illegal in D.C. in 1985, but the D.C. Council in recent years broadened the definition to make it more strict.)

The big picture: The tough-on-crime proposal comes while crime is up in D.C. — unlike other big cities where violence has declined.

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Illinois Supreme Court affirms law eliminating cash bail

The Illinois Supreme Court upheld a measure eliminating cash bail in the state, finding that Democratic legislators acted properly when they passed the law, which will transform the Illinois criminal justice system and limit judges’ ability to hold defendants in jail before trial, reported The New York Times.

The Illinois law, which went beyond similar bail overhauls in other states, was part of a national push to reduce jail populations and end a system in which wealth can determine whether a defendant returns home to await trial. But it infuriated many county prosecutors and sheriffs, who asserted that the law was passed improperly and made the state less safe.

In its ruling on Tuesday, the Supreme Court said cash bail would end in Illinois on Sept. 18.

Cash bail has been widely used for decades. Rather than sit in jail waiting for a trial that may not begin for months, a defendant is allowed to deposit money with the court and remain free. But if they fail to show up when they are supposed to, the defendant risks losing that money.

Civil rights groups and politicians, many of them Democrats, have long called for limiting or abolishing that system, and for allowing more defendants to be released without having to put up money. Critics say the cash bail system is unfair to poor defendants, who risk losing jobs or homes if they cannot afford to post bail.

“Someone’s experience with the criminal justice system should not vary based on their income level,” Attorney General Kwame Raoul, a Democrat, said in a statement praising the 5-to-2 decision.

But law enforcement groups have spoken in ominous terms about what the change would mean for public safety. In a court brief, lawyers for the union representing rank-and-file Chicago police officers said the law “sets forth a recipe for increases in crime, recidivism, dysfunction in the criminal prosecution system, and danger to police officers and the communities they serve.”

New Jersey and New Mexico have vastly reduced the use of cash bail but have not ended it completely. New York has eliminated it for certain types of offenses but not others. Those moves also led to fierce opposition, and some second-guessing.

The Illinois law passed with broad Democratic support and was signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, part of a shift to the political left since Democrats reclaimed full control of state government in the 2018 election.

Republicans voiced their opposition to the cash bail law during last year’s campaigns, but Mr. Pritzker won re-election by a wide margin and Democrats kept legislative majorities.

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Police are not the appropriate responders to mental health crisis

"Mental illness should not be your ticket to death."  

That is what Caroline Ouko said after watching video footage of her son's death while in police custody. Irvo Otieno, a 28-year-old aspiring musician, was reportedly suffering from a mental health crisis when he was placed under an emergency custody order. But like many others before him, Otieno did not receive the appropriate help from the criminal justice system. Instead, that system cost him his life, reported the USA Today. 

There is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the events surrounding this tragedy. Nevertheless, it is a stark reminder that there is an urgent need to improve how communities address mental health crises.

Police are not the appropriate responders to every mental health crisis. Law enforcement should be focused on preventing and solving serious crime, and are often not sufficiently trained and equipped to respond to crisis situations involving people suffering a mental health emergency.  

Local policymakers must create an environment that enables better and more comprehensive community mental health services that address mental health needs before they become crises. And when crises do occur, we should have appropriate responses that do not rely solely on law enforcement.  

Each year, 2 million jail bookings involve people with serious mental illness. About 40% of incarcerated people have a history of mental illness. What's more, 63% of those with a history of mental illness never receive treatment while incarcerated.  

Policing the USA:A family asked police to help man struggling with mental illness. Instead, they shot him.

Statute of limitations:How long do you have to report police brutality? Why one year is hardly enough.

Police and the criminal justice system at large have a critical role in ensuring public safety. But they do not have the same knowledge, training and expertise as mental health professionals and should not be the first responders for most situations involving a person experiencing a mental illness crisis.  

According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Crisis Intervention Team Training is a "40-hour curriculum taught over five consecutive days." A week in a classroom is simply not enough to prepare law enforcement for managing a problem as complex as mental illness, especially considering the types of high-adrenaline, and often violent, situations that police officers must deal with on a regular basis. 

Officers need more training so they can better support mental health professionals on calls where their presence may still be required.

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John Jay College: NYC bail reform laws reduced recidivism

Controversial new state bail laws that some politicians say lead to offenders getting released and then rearrested actually had the opposite overall effect, according to a new study of criminal justice data, reported by the Gothamist a New York City non-profit newsroom.

The study, from John Jay College’s Data Collaborative for Justice, showed that the 2020 bail reform laws eliminating judges’ ability to impose bail for low-level crimes actually reduced the likelihood that someone would get arrested again.

The one exception was for bail-eligible people who were released following recent violent felony arrests. The rate of rearrests for that cohort of offenders increased slightly.

“Fundamentally, we found that eliminating bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies reduced recidivism in New York City, while there was no clear effect in either direction for cases remaining bail eligible,” said Michael Rempel, director of John Jay College’s Data Collaborative for Justice, in a statement.

The study did not delve into the reasons behind the relative lack of recidivism among those who were released without having to pay bail. But experts have said that even temporary incarceration can lead to termination from jobs, family disruption and housing loss, which can incentivize further criminal activity.

The purpose of the 2020 reform laws was to allow people charged with most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies to be released while their cases played out in court. That meant they didn’t have to choose between paying bail and going to the dangerous Rikers Island jails. Instead, judges had to release people under other conditions like supervised release, which involves nonprofit agencies in the community doing monitoring and support.

The reforms were designed to reduce incarceration and stop putting people in jail just because they could not afford to post bail. But since the laws went into effect, politicians who oppose bail reform — such as Democratic Mayor Eric Adams — and conservative outlets like The New York Post, have argued that the laws went too far and led to violent criminals roaming free on city streets.

"We have a recidivism problem in New York and far too many people, there's about 2,000 people who are repeatedly catch, release, repeat in crimes," Adams said earlier this month. "If we don't take them off our streets, they're going to continue to prey on innocent people."

This new study found that the two-year rearrest rate for those released due to bail reform was 44%, compared to 50% for those with similar charges, criminal histories and demographics who were held in jail in the period before the reform.

It also took longer for those released as a result of bail reform to get rearrested than those forced to do a stint in jail after being charged.

Since the bail reform measures passed in 2019 and 2020, the new laws’ effect on crime has been perhaps the most debated topic in New York politics. It was a central focus of last year’s state elections, with Republicans and conservative Democrats alike claiming it led to spikes in crime, especially shootings and burglaries, because people were released without bail and went on to commit illegal acts. But so far data to prove that assertion has been limited, as have analyses countering the argument.

Tuesday's report tracked alleged offenders over a longer period than prior studies — including the time after cases were disposed of — and compared rearrests of those released pretrial due to bail reform and other statistically similar people who were held in jail.

“Our goal with this study was to substantially upgrade the credibility of information known to New Yorkers about bail reform and recidivism,” said Rempel in a statement.

Bail reform remains a hotly debated topic. Gov. Kathy Hochul is now seeking to eliminate the mandate that judges impose the “least restrictive condition” necessary on those charged with crimes still eligible for the imposition of bail, like violent felonies. The change would give more discretion to judges to allow them to impose higher bail amounts in order to keep more people locked up pretrial if they can’t afford to pay. But opponents say the proposal is unconstitutional.

The bail reform laws were initially passed in 2019 and modified in 2020 and 2022. The latest modifications went into effect in May and were not part of the John Jay study.

Offenses that are still not eligible for mandatory release are almost all violent felonies, sex offenses and certain domestic violence cases. Judges can order holding certain repeat offenders and those deemed a flight risk.

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