$2M GRANT INTENDED TO CUT JAIL POPULATION
MacArthur Foundation initiative tries to alter U.S. approach to jailing.
Palm Beach County leaders are hoping to reduce the county’s jail population by 17 percent and eliminate the racial disparities among the incarcerated over the next two years with the help of a $2 million national grant aimed at combating jail overpopulation.
The Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Commission announced Wednesday that the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded the group the $2 million as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge, described in a press release as “a more than $100 million national initiative to reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails.”
The money will be spread over the county’s jail and the courts system and the initiative consists of five major strategies:
■ Increased focus on risk assessment and smart-release options for pretrial inmates.
■ More efficient case process-
“The overarching goal of our work is to eliminate unnecessary incarceration, and our participation in the ing for defendants who have Safety and Justice Challenge to remain in jail. has been crucial in helping us
■ Diversion programs and make headway toward this warrant reduction for lowgoal,” Circuit Judge Jeffrey level defendants. Colbath said. “The additional
■ More data collection support will help us concapacity and analysis of the tinue this work, while also local system overall. pushing our justice reform
■ Strategies to reduce efforts further.” racial and ethnic dispariThe Criminal Justice Comties, including implicit bias. mission was previously
Part of all of these is more awarded a $150,000 grant training for all criminal jus- from the MacArthur Fountice agencies. dation, with work from a
As part of the grant award, group of local leaders in the the local court system is also legal community, includexpected to roll out a highing Colbath, Palm Beach tech system that will notify County State Attorney Dave defendants via text message Aronberg and Palm Beach of court dates to try to reduce County Public Defender the number of people jailed Carey Haughwout. for failure to appear in court. Based on the promise and
County officials also plan progress of that work, Palm to allocate part of the grant Beach County became one of money to explore alterna- eight counties in the nation tives to incarceration for selected by MacArthur on chronic arrestees who are Wednesday for the additional homeless or in need of men- funding. tal health treatment. In their
research, they found blacks make up a disproportionately large portion of the county jail pop- ulation, making up 19 per- cent of the county popula- tion but 50 percent of the jail population. Hispanics represent 21 percent of the population and 17 percent of the jail population.
The studyalso found a disparity in the average time spent in jail, with blacks spending 44 days; Hispanics, 40 days; and whites, 25 days.