Following through on Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform

The U.S. incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world. There are as many Americans with criminal records as with college degrees. But the tide is starting to turn. Despite the nation’s polarized political environment, criminal justice reform has been a unique area of alignment for over a decade. Impacted communities, agency leaders, and policymakers have worked together to pass bipartisan measures that have increased public safety, advanced racial equity, increased the use of better alternatives to prison, expanded education access behind bars, and enhanced mental health supports.

These legislative reforms have created significant opportunities for the criminal justice system's corrections agencies. New policies give them the ability to create smaller, fairer systems that bring about safer outcomes for their communities. But agencies often lack the tools they need to implement those policies. 

The underlying problem is data. Criminal justice agencies rely on data that are scattered across fragmented, cumbersome databases, often built in the 1980s. So even though policies create the possibility of a more effective criminal justice system, they can be difficult to implement. 

Here’s an example: When someone is sentenced to prison, they can earn time off their sentence by completing requirements or participating in programs – for example, 90 days for an apprenticeship, 60 days for a college course, or 30 days for consistently good behavior. But whether they can earn that time depends on whether those programs are available, how long the waitlist is, and whether the corrections agency can track and recognize the time earned.

Consider Oklahoma – the state with the second-highest per-capita incarceration rate in the U.S. If Oklahoma were able to maximize the credits available to people in prison across the state, the average length of time served would shrink by around 50% compared to the original sentence length. That’s just one state. When you zoom out to all 50 states, hundreds of thousands of people could earn several years off of their sentences. For many, this could mean enough time to come home from prison, get off supervision, or move to online-only check-ins – less restrictive (and less expensive) forms of oversight.

Recidiviz works with corrections agencies to stitch together their fragmented underlying databases and create a standardized data layer. Then, we build tools that show who is eligible for which earned time opportunities, giving staff the insight they need to best support people.

Earned time is just one area where Recidiviz is partnering with agencies to ensure that reforms see the light of day. Here are three other ways that Recidiviz helps bring existing policies to fruition:

1. Identify people who have completed their supervision requirements

As with earned time, scattered data is slowing down people's progress on supervision (probation and parole). 

Consider a parole officer with a typical caseload – let’s call her Allison. She's responsible for 90 people, who each need to do 20 different things to be released from parole, like having stable housing, steady employment and passing a drug test. Those requirements are scattered across five different databases. So Allison would have to manually check five databases 20 times every day to determine who had earned their freedom. This complexity means that people fall through the cracks. 

To prevent that, we built a tool that answers three simple questions:

1. Who is eligible for release right now but just hasn’t been surfaced by the system?
2. Who is almost eligible but needs to complete one more step, like providing proof of attending their last Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? 
3. And who needs support? Help finding steady housing, getting a job, or getting substance abuse treatment?

Over the past year, this tool has helped officers accelerate 1,500 people out of the system who had already satisfied all of their supervision requirements. And that’s just the start. If we were to scale this approach nationally, we could help identify an estimated 200,000 people who are eligible for early discharge from parole or probation. 

2. Move people from prison to community supervision – and closer to freedom

We’re working to bring this same proactive approach inside the prison walls. 

Analysis in one Recidiviz partner state found that nearly 12% of people in prison were already eligible to go home (to complete their sentence on community supervision). 

To accelerate those people towards freedom, a new Recidiviz tool helps case managers identify people who are ready to be moved to supervision. It reevaluates old cases against new policies, highlighting people who are now eligible. It also calls out people who are nearly there – who need to do 1-2 things to be released, so that staff can see and prioritize those outstanding items.

3. Show parole officers how they compare to their colleagues

Finally, our tools help staff see how they compare to their peers, so that they can learn from each other. Most parole officers start their careers excited to help people get back on their feet. But the average officer has no insight into how well they’re doing so. Recidiviz makes it easy for officers to see how they’re doing on a whole host of metrics, so they can see where they're best-in-class and where they can improve. This feedback loop helps officers who are struggling and motivates outstanding officers who can share expertise. 

These peer comparisons lead to impressive progress. When officers learn that they're among the most punitive in the state, they change their approach, leading to measurable reductions in the rate of people returning to prison for minor infractions. This has a big aggregate effect: if 25% of the most-punitive parole officers performed like the median nationwide, 35,000 fewer people would be admitted to prison per year. 

We provide these same kinds of comparisons at the district level, too. In one Recidiviz partner state, the most punitive district generates 67% more supervision violations than the average district. By identifying the cause of that discrepancy and then coaching the officers in that district, leadership can ensure that people are treated fairly, and laws are enforced equally across the state.

With modern technology tools (powered by a standardized data layer), Recidiviz can help corrections agencies:

1. Identify people who are falling through the cracks, 
2. Move people closer to freedom, and 
3. Enable staff to learn from each other to deliver the best outcomes more effectively.

This support makes it possible for these agencies to follow through on all of the critical, bipartisan efforts to improve the criminal justice system – supporting stretched staff, reducing racial disparities, and increasing the chances that people will thrive when they return home. Combining the right data with thoughtful implementation can help people succeed and strengthen our communities.

Learn more and get involved:

• If you work for a corrections agency, check out our tools and explore our free policy impact forecasting resources.
• Apply for one of our open positions.  ‍
• Read more about our work in Stanford Magazine.