It turns out income, housing, and access to care stand a much better chance of creating public safety than other strategies---all while ensuring communities are safer, healthier, and more able to thrive.
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Simple neighborhood designs can do more for public safety
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Our system isn't helping kids--it's putting parents in prison.
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Across the US, cities, counties, and some states are re-evaluating the use of cash bail.
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It is critical that Americans also acknowledge that powerful institutions inflict violence on people presumed innocent under the law every day. As it stands, the system is directly at odds with the idea that Americans are “innocent until proven guilty”, inflicting severe and traumatizing punishment long before a person sees a jury of their peers.
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We must confront the fact that we cannot empty our prisons and jails without addressing the influx of people pushed through community supervision into incarceration.
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Our legal system targets poor people, and then makes it more likely that they will both stay poor and stay in legal trouble.
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Access to public benefits may be an under-appreciated public safety mechanism. When people are able to pay their rent, support their families, not go hungry, have a roof over their heads, and have access to healthcare, they are less likely to engage in crime.
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In addition to promoting programs that help people secure housing, we must deliberately shrink the criminal legal system in order to expand housing access.
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In its current form, the American carceral system robs people of opportunity, tears families apart, and destabilizes entire communities. Unlike police, prisons, and prosecutors, public defenders are uniquely situated to empower those facing the criminal legal system, shrink the system itself by reducing incarceration, and transform our approach to public safety.
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Interacting with the police, being arrested, or spending time behind bars make it more difficult for a person to get a quality education and access to opportunity. If we care about improving opportunity—and public safety—through education, we must consider shrinking the criminal legal system itself.
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We must stop using jail as a substitute for care.
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The first step to reducing homelessness might be reducing arrests.
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Just a few years behind bars can increase risk of death by 80% and shave a decade off a person's life.
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The criminal legal system is keeping people poor.
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