What Really Lowers Crime

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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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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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 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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The first step to reducing homelessness might be reducing arrests.
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The criminal legal system is keeping people poor.
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