Hello, and welcome to the SJC Community! We are so glad to have you here. For those of you who are new to the Safety and Justice Challenge, we wanted to share some information to help you get started before we get together in October.
So, first things first: what is the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC)?
The SJC is a national initiative conceived in 2015 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to realize two goals: reduce jail populations and eliminate racial disparities in jails. The SJC has worked closely with participating cities and counties from across the country to develop sustainable reform strategies and advance equity.
A key aspect of the SJC which you'll be hearing a lot more about is funding research and using research to drive change, and findings to date constitute a vast, unprecedented knowledge base that serves as a foundation for sharing lessons learned with the field at large.
Currently, the SJC prioritizes six areas in which to advance research:
- Effective strategies for jail population reduction
- Understanding case processing and its impact on jail populations
- Eliminating racial and ethnic disparities
- Long-term implications of COVID-19 efforts for decarceration reform
- Public safety implications of decarceration reforms
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Understanding criminal justice decision-making
There are many different ways the SJC funds research, and quite a bit of research that has been funded in nearly a decade since the SJC was established. To learn more about the SJC's research and mechanisms to fund research,
click here.
Watch this space for more information on the SJC, and of course, the upcoming Research Symposium!
Sincerely,
Daphne
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Daphne Moraga
Research Analyst
CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance
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