Resources

This blueprint, developed by TJC’s attorneys and criminal justice policy experts, outlines concrete steps to address the country’s mass incarceration crisis and provides actionable solutions to creating a fairer and more equitable justice system.

Campaign Zero evaluated the policing practices of San Diego Police Department (SDPD) and San Diego Sheriff’s Department (SDSD). Results show both departments to be engaged in a pattern of discriminatory policing.

The California Police Scorecard utilizes data on a range of policing-related issues to evaluate how each police department interacts with, and the extent to which officers are held accountable to, the communities they serve. The indicators included in this scorecard were selected based on a review of the research literature, input from activists and experts in the field, and a review of existing publicly available datasets on policing in California. The scorecard is designed to help communities, researchers, police leaders and policy-makers take informed action to reduce police use of force and improve accountability and public safety in their jurisdictions.

This is a first-of-its-kind portal that augments the work of the Policing Reform Campaign and provides publicly available data on federal grants awarded to over 150 local law enforcement agencies across the nation. The database provides demographic data for those jurisdictions and, where available, information on police misconduct complaints filed by individuals, consent decrees, and settlement amounts. Communities can use this information to support demands for accountability for law enforcement agencies believed to be engaged in discriminatory or otherwise unlawful conduct.

A collection of written and audio resources around various topics related to policing, prisons, and criminal justice reform and abolition. Author’s note: In general, I’ve tried to list shorter pieces, articles, and listening/viewing material. Though the sources are organized thematically, there is no issue in the carceral state that doesn’t intersect with another; therefore, most of the categories are necessarily false divides used for purposes of organization. In places where I’ve listed books, I include a link to the book or to an interview with the author.

Over the course of 2019, Local Progress engaged local elected officials and community leaders in a range of communities to evaluate their localities’ policing practices using the Reform/Transform toolkit. Those evaluations have produced the first results of the Reform/Transform toolkit in 12 cities: Chicago, Dallas, Durham, Louisville, Madison, Minneapolis, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C.

This is a new initiative launched in fall 2018 through the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW) Social Justice Institute by Researchers-in-Residence Andrea J. Ritchie and Mariame Kaba. The project aims to interrupt and end the the growing criminalization and incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color for criminalized acts related to public order, poverty, child welfare, drug use, survival and self-defense, including criminalization and incarceration of survivors of violence.

Although members of law enforcement do not serve as treatment providers for any other illness, they have become “road runners,” responding to mental health emergencies and traveling long distances to shuttle people with mental illness from one facility to another. This report is the first-ever national survey of sheriffs’ offices and police departments on these issues, and it provides a unique glimpse into the burdens they must shoulder as well as the fiscal and societal implications of the current situation. The survey responses represent 355 sheriffs’ offices and police departments in the United States.

Despite the dearth of official data, there is abundant evidence individuals with mental illness make up a disproportionate number of those killed at the very first step of the criminal justice process: while being approached or stopped by a law enforcement officer in the community. This 2015 report surveys the status of law enforcement homicide reporting, examines the demonstrable role of mental illness in the use of deadly force by law enforcement and recommends practical approaches to reducing fatal police shootings and the many social costs associated with them.