Criminal Justice

Challenge

Jurisdictions seeking to promote public safety have traditionally relied on punitive approaches like criminalization, policing, incarceration, and community supervision. These approaches often fail to address the underlying social problems that lead to involvement with the criminal justice system, instead creating harm to individuals and communities, perpetuating racial, ethnic, and wealth disparities, and increasing costs without producing meaningful improvements in public safety. 

Approach

The GPL’s criminal justice portfolio aims to address these harms by shrinking the footprint of the criminal justice system through testing, scaling, and spreading interventions that prevent people from entering or deepening harmful contact with the system. GPL technical assistance supports jurisdictions seeking ways to build upstream community-level interventions that can address residents’ underlying needs, allowing them to reduce over-reliance on law enforcement and use their scarce public safety resources more efficiently. To that end, we support governments looking to implement preventative practices in the following focus areas: 

  • Community-based public safety: Strengthening community-based services and interventions that support residents most impacted by violence to promote wellbeing and community safety while working to prevent involvement with the formal criminal justice system. The GPL is supporting St. Paul, MN and Baltimore, MD through their Offices of Neighborhood Safety in exploring approaches to developing new measures of public safety that integrate resident input.  
     
  • Alternative 911 response: Creating alternative pathways to community-based resources that address residents' underlying needs instead of utilizing law enforcement resources that can lead to arrest and incarceration. Through its Alternative 911 Emergency Response Implementation Cohort and Community of Practice, the GPL has supported jurisdictions across the country to launch teams of unarmed trained responders to 911 calls. 
     
  • Pretrial justice: Supporting implementation of data-driven pretrial supervision decisions to improve pretrial outcomes while making pretrial supervision less restrictive. The GPL is currently supporting five jurisdictions  to implement reforms to their pretrial supervision systems by releasing individuals from jail pretrial while limiting the use of punitive pretrial supervision tactics.    

Our Work

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42
intensive projects completed

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$224M+
in funds redirected towards outcomes

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88,000+
residents receiving improved public services

Events

2021 Sep 30

Shifting From Planning To Doing: Implementing Alternative 911 Emergency Response Systems

12:30pm to 1:30pm

Location: 

Zoom

Across the country, governments are exploring alternative responses to nonviolent 911 calls that reduce reliance on traditional law enforcement and better connect residents to other forms of needed support, including mental and behavioral health services. To support these efforts, the GPL...

Read more about Shifting From Planning To Doing: Implementing Alternative 911 Emergency Response Systems

Our Team