Safety and Justice Challenge announces inaugural racial equity cohort
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced grants totaling $2 million to four cities and counties in support of efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic inequities in their local criminal justice systems.
The inaugural Racial Equity Cohort of the foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) initiative will work with community partners to center lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color and authentically engage the community. Each city or county and its partner organization will receive resources to address national and local drivers of racial inequities, as well as training and technical assistance focused on racial equity and authentic community engagement, peer-to-peer support from other cohort members, and qualitative and quantitative data and analytic support.
The selected communities are Cook County (Illinois), where the Office of the Chief Judge and the Justice Advisory Council will work with Chicago Regional Organizing for Antiracism; New Orleans, where the Office of Criminal Justice Coordination will partner with Total Community Action; Philadelphia, where the Center for Carceral Communities—an initiative of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice—will collaborate with the district attorney’s office, Why Not Prosper, and the City of Philadelphia; and Pima County (Arizona), where the Office of Justice Services will partner with the YWCA of Southern Arizona.
Criminal justice and policy research organizations providing technical assistance and counsel to the SJC Racial Equity Cohort include the Center for Court Innovation, Haywood Burns Institute, Nexus Community Partners, Everyday Democracy, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Shriver Center on Poverty Law, Race Forward, and the CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, JustLeadershipUSA, National Legal Aid & Defenders Association, and PRA, Inc.
“While the Safety and Justice Challenge has been successful in reducing local jail populations, it has also taught us that this alone will not eliminate racial disparities in the criminal justice system,” said MacArthur Foundation director of criminal justice Laurie Garduque. “By pairing the leadership of people most impacted by mass incarceration with the expertise of government partners, we hope this cohort of jurisdictions will challenge systemic racism in our justice systems and create policies and practices to sustain long-term change.”
(Photo credit: Getty Images/txking)
