The National League of Cities’ The Municipal Reentry Leaders Network (MRLN) encourages adoption of promising, evidence-based practices, embedding and expanding reentry services and support via policy and budgets, and measuring results. This unique collaborative of city-led reentry center directors, as well as leaders from community-based organizations, returning citizens and higher education reentry initiatives from across the country provides ongoing engagement for municipalities to achieve these goals to increase public safety for all. This panel of city officials and community leaders from the MRLN will discuss strategies for supporting recovery from substance use as part of the reentry process.
This workshop will focus on defining success in equity work throughout the changing times and changing narratives. Racial equity efforts have existed, persisted, and made substantial changes to the criminal justice system long before they were labeled as racial equity work. These efforts will endure long after the Safety Justice Challenge winds down. Our workshop will discuss the ways that strategies and narratives have shifted over time, including in the SJC, while moving toward one enduring goal. Success is not linear, nor is it a monolith, and it may be hard to define in the face of ever-changing inequity. As community members and justice system stakeholders continue the long journey toward equity, this panel will invite them to consider how they have been defining success along the way. This workshop will grapple with definitions of success in racial equity work and will encourage those who strive to create equity in the criminal justice system to utilize guiding principles to acknowledge, measure, and celebrate each success that is paved along the pathway to racial equity.
For more than seven years, the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) has been rebuilding local criminal justice systems with a focus on reducing jail incarceration and racial and ethnic disparities. As the Foundation pivots to investing in the sustainability of reforms, the issue of talent and leadership is rising to the fore. Therefore, the Foundation is investing in pathways to ensure that diverse and talented leaders are prepared to guide the criminal justice system and are empowered with lessons from the SJC experience to propel future change. The Safety and Justice Talent Consortium, launching in 2024, aims to assemble a leadership pipeline of BIPOC criminal justice talent by targeting each stage of the employee life cycle—from entry level to mid-management to leadership.
This panel will discuss the issues at the core of recruitment and retention within SJC sites and propose a series of innovative and equitable leadership development strategies to address them.