More than ever, communities are demanding more information about how their criminal legal system operates in light of mass incarceration and the expanding criminal legal system population. Further, given the disparate impacts of the criminal legal system on Black and Brown populations, it’s necessary to understand where racial disparities arise. While judges and prosecutors’ offices have a great impact on these issues, however, there is often a lack of comprehensive data about their practices and the implications for people interacting with the system.
From August 2022 to January 2023, 30 local organizations used data and technology to inform and improve policies and practices to advance racial equity and reform in the criminal legal system as part of the Catalyst Grant Program. Many of these grantees focused on innovations in prosecutorial processes, judicial decisions, and court operations. Innovations spanned pretrial release and bail, fines and fees, resentencing, alternative courts, and the diversity of the prosecutorial profession. Their approaches and achievements can provide models, lessons, and inspiration for advocates, communities, local governments, funders, and data-and-technology experts across the United States.
Pretrial Release and Bail
Hundreds of thousands of people are in custody in local jails merely waiting for a decision on their criminal case. Whether a person is released pretrial often depends on whether they can pay bail, and this disparately affects people with low incomes. Being held in custody pretrial often induces guilty pleas, and pretrial custody has also been shown to have negative effects on health, employment, and general economic stability. JusticePoint worked with the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee to conduct statistical analyses of official court data and identify the pandemic’s effects on racial disparities in pretrial release practices. Their findings were presented to stakeholders and kickstarted a conversation in Milwaukee on how the use of bail can worsen racial disparities.
Fines and Fees
Every year, courts assess millions of dollars of fines and fees on people adjudicated guilty in criminal cases. These fines and fees are used to fund everything from court processes to states’ general funds to special projects, and in many places, there is no formal process by which the debt can be written off, meaning it follows the people who owe it for the rest of their lives. Fines and fees can have disastrous consequences for communities of color in particular, but there is little transparency on what factors impact the assessment of fines and fees, how much money is collected, and exactly where it goes. With Catalyst Grant Program funding, Alabama Appleseed, in partnership with the University of Alabama, investigated how fines and fees are assessed and collected and how the revenue from them is distributed in Jefferson County, Alabama. They analyzed case-level and demographic data and interviewed system actors in Jefferson County and at the state level to understand more about these processes and how long it takes for people to pay off their debt. They found that legal financial obligations are an unsustainable revenue source that exacerbates racial inequities in criminal legal system outcomes and financial well-being. Findings will help guide reforms in court practices in Jefferson County and provide a model for jurisdictions around the country seeking to improve the fairness of their own policies and practices around fines and fees.
Resentencing
Resentencing is a lever court actors hold to review extreme sentences and past injustices, such as racial disparities in sentencing. For example, Black people receive significantly longer sentences than their white counterparts, and resentencing can be used to rectify these disparities. For The People used Catalyst funds to create a prison file automation review tool for prosecutors’ offices implementing Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing in California. The purpose of the tool is to reduce the time that line prosecutors, other county district attorney staff members, and other attorneys preparing cases for resentencing need to spend preparing documents for people’s cases, given high caseloads and the nature of some of the information required to prepare these documents. The hope is that this tool can reduce the demands of this process on staff members while expediting the resentencing of people going through the process.
Alternative Courts
Alternative courts offer nontraditional ways to resolve cases in the criminal legal system. For example, problem-solving courts bring together service providers with court actors to respond to a person’s legal system involvement and address underlying causes of their actions; these courts can address a range of offenses. In addition, community courts are an increasingly popular response to the push for less punitive measures to address crime. These courts offer an alternative way to redress crime in which the community comes together to resolve harm, providing people with the agency to address problems in their communities. These courts are not mandated in every jurisdiction, but where they are used, they offer a less punitive response to crime.
With Catalyst grant funding, the James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy worked with residents in Cook County, Illinois, to understand their perspectives on the county’s recent alternative-to-justice programs and their vision for accountability in their community. With the help of system-impacted young adults, they collected data from community members through circle processes and surveys on their needs and visions for building restorative, community-led systems of accountability. With the assistance of natural language processing tools, the Moran Center synthesized and identified themes in the collected data and is using the findings to guide its next steps in building alternative local accountability systems.
The work of these Catalyst grantees has shed light on racial disparities and harms caused by the criminal legal system in their communities and spurred improvements to policies and practices to allow courts, prosecutors, and defense attorneys to better serve their communities.
The Catalyst Grant Program is a collaboration between the Urban Institute and the Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative to help nonprofit organizations use data and technology to advance racial equity and reform in the criminal legal system. Visit the Catalyst Grant Program Insights page for more resources and stories about the grantees.
