A Promising Alternative Incarceration Model is Set to Expand
Around 95% of people incarcerated in state prisons will eventually return to their communities. That is why conditions within prisons affect many more lives than just those of incarcerated people and corrections staff. Abusive, negligent, and violent conditions can derail successful community reintegration and negatively impact public safety, public health, and the economy. As our founder and co-chair, John Arnold, posted recently, “Prisons must do more to maximize the chance of successful reintegration. Productive programming and humane living conditions are a necessary component of that.”
For this reason, we are excited about Pennsylvania’s recent announcement that it plans to expand the “Scandinavia Prison Project” - which aims to improve prison conditions by focusing on safety, rehabilitation, and restorative justice. The pilot project was launched at SCI Chester in a unit dubbed “Little Scandinavia.” With support from AV, Little Scandinavia is being rigorously evaluated through a randomized controlled trial (RCT). While results from that study are still pending, the state has seen enough evidence of improved conditions for incarcerated people and staff that it has decided to expand the model to three other prisons. We hope that the rigorous evaluation expands to include these new units as well.
Read more about the proposed expansion in the Philadelphia Inquirer here.
Centering Risk in Bail Decisions
Over the past decade, an increasing number of states and counties have reevaluated their use of money bond as a pretrial release condition and moved towards a system where decisions about pretrial release and detention are made based on the person’s likelihood of court appearance and risk to public safety. Rigorous research shows that this is a fairer, more effective way to promote public safety because we know that in the money-bond system many low-risk people are needlessly detained (harming their future outcomes) while many high-risk people are released.
To help meet this need for risk-based pretrial approaches, AV recently renewed its support for the “Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research” initiative (APPR) housed at the Center for Effective Public Policy. Over the next three years, APPR will work in select states to support effective, bipartisan pretrial release and detention policies that are grounded in evidence. APPR will also build a bridge between local governments and researchers to facilitate robust evaluations of new policy levers that aim to more effectively target the use of pretrial detention.
Specifically, the organization plans to connect jurisdictions with the Lab for Economic Opportunities at Notre Dame and other research partners to evaluate new pretrial policies and practices. APPR will also continue its communications efforts to drive a fact-based public narrative about pretrial reform and continue to oversee implementation materials for the Public Safety Assessment (PSA), the most widely used pretrial assessment in the nation.
In the News
- State public safety officials have a wealth of knowledge about what works and does not work to reduce crime and keep communities safe. Bringing these officials together to learn from one another’s experiences and build evidence-based approaches is an important step towards improving public safety and community wellbeing across the country, as Marc Krupanski explains in a new AV-story about the National Governors Association’s Consortium of Public Safety Executives.
- AV is committed to ensuring policymakers, communities, and other stakeholders have strong, reliable evidence about criminal justice policies and approaches. Learn more about some of the research projects we supported in 2024 in this new press release. It is intended to be illustrative of the work that AV is funding in the criminal justice field and serve as a resource for academics and practitioners who might be interested in applying for funding or in the outcome of previously funded research. To submit a research project for consideration, please see our open RFP.
- Domestic violence affects millions of Americans each year. However, prosecuting these cases is notoriously difficult. Read our new Q&A with University of Connecticut Associate Professor of Public Policy Kerri Raissian about a recent "innovation day" at Vanderbilt University Law School that focused on ways to improve domestic violence prosecutions and reduce victimization.
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