Top 7 from 2022—reports, podcasts, videos, and more!

Thank you for being part of the Center for Justice Innovation! As we approach the end of the year, we want to share highlights of all we built together in 2022—the reports, podcasts, and videos that help policymakers, leaders, and community members build a fair and humane justice system.

Alternative Approaches to Justice

Contact with the criminal legal system can often produce lasting harms for individuals and their communities. We advocate for humane, fair, and effective approaches to justice, including reducing jail populations.

• Women and gender-expansive people held on Rikers are uniquely vulnerable to the harms of incarceration. Read our recommendations on how to safely and sustainably reduce this population in order to meet the city’s goal of closing Rikers by 2027.
• The vast majority of the nation's criminal cases are misdemeanors. Yet instead of promoting public safety, evidence suggests that traditional misdemeanor prosecution makes people more likely to be re-arrested in the future. Read about racial disparities in these cases.
• Prioritizing treatment over incarceration, the Brooklyn Mental Health Court was one of the first courts in the country to handle felony-level charges, including violent felony charges, for those diagnosed with severe mental illnesses.

Empowering Communities

Community members are the experts on their own neighborhoods and know best what needs to happen to achieve greater safety.

• Our Guide to Safe and Equitable Communities shares community-based solutions that put safety and justice decisions in the hands of residents.
• We work with communities to reach people in need of essential services through outreach and community events. In August, we brought justice into the community, providing resources and support for those seeking stable housing, needing repairs, fearing eviction, and more.

Data-driven Solutions

We believe in using data and research to inform initiatives, solutions, and policies. But what data is being used, and who is listening, is critical.

• Community safety work operates outside the criminal legal system to build a more robust, community-led form of safety. Yet, most program evaluation relies on data from within the legal system, missing the true impact. Read our case for a new paradigm.
• The mass of data the criminal legal system generates overwhelmingly tells us that the system is not leading to greater safety, and is inflicting often tremendous harm on the people that it touches. But efforts to make this point using numbers often fail to stick. Find out why in this episode of New Thinking.