RESOURCES
Knowledge Center
Outcomes, discoveries, and analysis from our breadth of good governance initiatives.
Reform in Action: Findings and Recommendations from a 3-Year Process Evaluation of New York's 2020 Criminal Legal Reforms
The evaluation, which covered all four of the key areas of reform, aimed not just to document what the rollout looked like, but also to understand the factors and circumstances that facilitated or hindered success. Importantly, it centered the perspectives of those closest to the process—namely, administrators, practitioners, direct service providers, and people involved with the criminal legal system.
Reform in the Media: Analyzing How Local Media Covered New York’s Criminal Legal Reform Narrative
Our findings suggest that media coverage of the reforms lacked details about the legislation’s purpose and specific changes to the pretrial process, disproportionately focused on perspectives that were critical of the legislation, and emphasized the perceived negative impacts to community safety.
Reform in Action: Fact Sheets on Initial Findings by Area
To examine how criminal legal system agencies put these reforms into practice, ISLG , through support from Arnold Ventures, is conducting a process evaluation of these implementation efforts through combination of interviews, focus groups, document reviews, and data analyses. This series of fact sheets digs into each of these reforms.
[From Our Partners] FamilySafe Project Evaluation: Implementation and Outcomes of Family-Focused Counseling for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence
Sanctuary and STEPS successfully designed and continue to implement a trauma-focused model of programming that treats diverse families as a unit and facilitates communication and collaboration between the adult and child treatment staff
[From Our Partners] Addressing Trauma Among School-Aged Children
Margaret's Place aims to raise awareness about experiences of trauma and violence among youth and provide direct interventions for those impacted, with particular attention to the many types of violence (e.g., home, community, and dating) experienced by young people. This report presents findings from the process evaluation of Margaret’s Place that was conducted between 2019 and 2021.
[From Our Partners] Youth Opportunity Hubs: Fostering Collaboration. Building Resilience.
The Youth Opportunity Hub (YOH) Initiative was designed to prevent or reduce criminal legal system interactions, improve life outcomes, and provide support for youth by fostering access, collaboration, and partnership among social service providers. The final evaluation report, and its associated policy brief, offers a look at the development, implementation, and outcomes of the Initiative, as well as offers lessons learned and recommendations for other organizations seeking to implement similar programs.
[From Our Partners] Understanding the Population of People with Frequent Jail Contact
Funded by ISLG, this study sought to track the flow of people with frequent jail contact, assess the various strategies used by sites to reduce jail contact, and investigate outcomes, especially for people of color and people with behavioral health conditions.
[From Our Partners] At the Intersection of Probation and Jail Reduction Efforts
This study aimed to decipher the system-level trends in jail incarceration for probation violations and the key pathways to jail incarceration for those individuals currently on probation.
[From Our Partners] Safety and Justice Challenge Case Studies from the Urban Institute
To compliment and expand upon the data trends published by ISLG, the Urban Institute, an SJC partner, worked with a handful of SJC cities and counties to produce a series of case studies digging deeper into several SJC strategies.
[From Our Partners] The Transgender Healing and Resilience Initiative for Survivors of Violence: Final Evaluation Report
While historically facing disproportionately high rates of exposure to violence, transgender and gender non-binary (TGNB) folks also face barriers to accessing mental health care. To help fill this gap in service, the the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery (CTMS), with funding from CJII, created the Trauma Healing and Resilience Initiative for Transgender Survivors of Violence (THRIV).
[From Our Partners] An Evaluation of a Workforce Development Program for Domestic Violence Survivors in New York City
The goal of the Career Readiness Training Program (CRTP) is to help New York City’s economically marginalized families overcome barriers to financial independence, such as chronic unemployment exacerbated by abuse, structural discrimination, the stigma of poverty, limited opportunities for education, and shelter system dependence. By participating in the CRTP, survivors, who are often concerned for their safety and that of their children, have an opportunity to regain financial control and get a fresh start in life.
[From Our Partners] A Process and Outcome Evaluation of Project Reset
Project Reset is a program that diverts adults arrested for low-level crimes into community-based support programs and out of the court system. Through CJII, the RAND Corporation conducted a process and outcome evaluation of the program, identifying key program facilitators and barriers, documented participant experiences, determined the effect the program had on case outcomes and rearrest rates, and examined whether the program was cost-effective.
Jail Populations, Violent Crime, and COVID-19: Findings from the Safety and Justice Challenge
The report showed that, on average, SJC cities and counties successfully reduced jail populations without jeopardizing community safety. People released from jail after the implementation of criminal legal reforms were no more likely to return to jail within a year and were extremely unlikely to return to jail for a violent crime.
[From Our Partners] The Men’s Empowerment Program Final Evaluation
MEP is a community-based, trauma-informed program for survivors of crime serving young men of color living primarily in Harlem and other low-income neighborhoods within New York City.
[From Our Partners] An Evaluation of the Medical Legal Partnership
The Medical Legal Partnership aims to positively affect the community by (a) improving functioning among families of youth at high risk for criminal legal involvement and (b) improving coordination between mental health services and legal services for youth at high risk for criminal justice involvement.
[From Our Partners] Probation Violations as Drivers of Jail Incarceration in St. Louis, Missouri
In effort to learn more about the impact probation revocations have on jails, and promising strategies to address it, ISLG funded the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) to conduct a mixed-methods study on probation revocations as a driver of jail incarceration and the impact of a program aimed at addressing technical probation violations in the county, called the St. Louis County Expedited Probation Program (EPP).
[From Our Partners] Improving Equity and Fairness in Plea Negotiation
One practice that defines the pretrial period is plea bargaining. Despite the wide use of plea bargaining, little is known about the practice, largely because it happens outside public view and with little documentation. In an effort to uncover plea bargaining practices, ISLG funded two studies from two research partners: the Urban Institute to conduct a mixed-methods study of plea bargaining processes in one SJC site—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Loyola University Chicago and the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) to conduct mixed-methods studies of plea bargaining processes in two SJC sites: Milwaukee County, Wisconsin and St. Louis County, Missouri.
Measuring Progress: Exploring Jail Trends in Safety and Justice Challenge Communities
Earlier this year, ISLG launched Measuring Progress, an interactive tool that can help stakeholders and the public track progress achieved by Safety and Justice Challenge sites. ISLG has dug deeper into two of the findings so far relating to the effects of COVID-19 on jail populations and racial and ethnic disparities. These briefs provide additional important context to the trends shown in the tool.
[From Our Partners] Conducting Research with the Deaf Community
In this brief, the Urban Institute and Gallaudet University describe the methods they used to evaluate Barrier Free Living’s (BFL’s) Deaf Services (DS) program, which aims to improve direct services for domestic violence survivors who are deaf and increase local stakeholders’ awareness of deaf survivors’ needs in New York City.
[From Our Partners] Strengthening Domestic Violence Services for Deaf Survivors: An Evaluation of Barrier Free Living’s Deaf Services Program
Research indicates deaf people report experiencing victimization at higher rates, but a lack of accessible resources and trauma-informed services for American Sign Language (ASL) speakers makes it difficult for deaf people to report crimes and access support.
In response to these issues, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DANY) has provided funding to support Barrier Free Living’s (BFL’s) Deaf Services (DS) program since 2017 through its Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII).