The Strategy: How Justice Reinvestment Works
Step 2: Provide policymakers with options to generate savings and increase public safety.
The justice reinvestment experts generate various options that recognize the uniqueness of each state’s criminal justice system and tailor them to that jurisdiction, such as strategies to
- reduce parole and probation revocations,
- focus supervision resources where they can have the greatest impact, and
- hold offenders (and service providers) accountable for the successful completion of programs such as drug treatment and job training.
When implemented correctly, these and other options moderate the growth of a state’s prison population and make programs more effective and efficient – results that help policymakers contain and cut spending. At the same time, using data to focus resources on those people most likely to re-offend makes communities safer.
“We’ve got a broken corrections system. Recidivism rates are too high and create too much of a financial burden on states without protecting public safety. My state and others are reinventing how we do business by employing justice reinvestment strategies that can put our taxpayers’ dollars to better use.”
– U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas)