Resources

This report examines the way our criminal legal systems have driven up incarceration rates, disproportionately harmed communities of color, and failed to provide true public safety. Specifically, we analyze sentencing and incarceration policies and law enforcement practices, including those in policing and prosecution, that have created systems of control but failed to treat underlying challenges. The report then lays out a new path for public safety that looks to the comprehensive, research-based strategies in policing, prosecution, and sentencing that elected and appointed leaders are using to move away from harsh carceral practices and respond to social and economic needs. These reforms illuminate a new vision of public safety that reduces our reliance on systems of enforcement and control while relying instead on research, collaboration, and community engagement—not incarceration—to build and support communities.

The Collective Freedom Project is a website and digital space made to uplift the work of advocates across the country working to dismantle narratives that criminalize our communities for cross-sector solidarity.

Researchers have conducted hundreds of studies looking for effective ways to prevent and reduce violence, but the knowledge base is far from complete, especially as it relates to one important question: are there ways to prevent violence without relying on the police? The obvious answer is “yes.” Policing has never been the primary explanation for obviously varying levels of community safety. Residents of wealthy areas do not experience the intense police surveillance and enforcement imposed on poor neighborhoods. Yet, rates of violence are reliably lower in wealthy communities.

Arnold Ventures asked the John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center (JohnJayREC) to review the research evidence for violence reduction strategies that do not rely on law enforcement. The scan was carried out by an expert group of researchers from the fields of public policy, criminology, law, public health, and social science. The members of the research group worked collaboratively to identify, translate, and summarize the most important and actionable studies.

The primary purpose of this guide is to serve as a pragmatic tool for individuals and communities organizing and advocating for non-police mental health crisis responses, and to offer key considerations for what can be a complex, costly, and long-term intervention strategy.

This guide highlights considerations for real, meaningful shifts away from law enforcement and towards autonomous, self-determined community-based resources and responses to unmet mental health needs. It also takes into account a range of knowledge and expertise among the intended audience: community members, advocates, organizers, activists, mental health professionals, policymakers, and other change agents working towards the selection and implementation of mental health crisis responses.

As the nation grapples with defining the proper roles and limits of police generally, and particularly in Black, Brown, and other communities that have borne disproportionate harms from police (as well as from many other institutions), we propose an approach that we believe would be both realistic and effective: adopting the goals, metrics, and lenses of public health. By replacing current performance metrics with public health metrics and flawed conceptions with ones that are based upon evidence, and by demanding agility and accountability in changing practices and policies when they are shown to cause harm, we can improve the health, safety, and well-being of communities across the United States. This article sketches out the way forward and provides some illustrative examples.

The intent of this toolkit is to further the movement to #DefundCPD, and the larger movement to abolish all forms of police. Our goals are to educate and to share resources for individuals, groups, and organizations to have conversations about abolition. This toolkit grounds the conversation in real-world examples in Chicago and elsewhere, and interrogates our society’s narratives about the police. We also intend to make resources we’ve used in Chicago accessible to those around the country. We believe in a vision of dismantling toxic carceral systems, and building real systems of community safety. With education, solidarity, and collective action, we are building a world without police.

Amidst a growing national conversation about sexual violence sparked by #MeToo and the ‘me, too.’ movement originated by Tarana Burke, and an ongoing national reckoning around the violence of policing, one form of sexual and police violence remains shrouded in silence: police sexual violence.

This is a curriculum for sexual assault service providers intended to accompany Interrupting Criminalization’s report Shrouded in Silence: Police Sexual Violence – What We Know and What We Can Do About It. Facilitators and participants are strongly encouraged to review the report before using any of the exercises in this curriculum.

In the midst of a national reckoning around the violence of policing, and a national conversation about sexual assault prompted by #MeToo and the ‘me, too.’ movement launched by Tarana Burke, sexual violence by law enforcement officers – including local and state police, ICE agents and Border Patrol, school “resource” officers, federal law enforcement agents, probation and parole officers – remains shrouded in silence. Survivors of police sexual violence are rarely heard from or discussed in either conversation, and their experiences generally do not drive organizing and advocacy in either context.

This report, in conjunction with an accompanying curriculum for sexual assault service providers, is intended to contribute to breaking this silence, to summarize what we know about sexual violence by law enforcement officers, and to offer concrete steps toward prevention of police sexual violence and increased safety, support, and opportunities for healing for survivors. For more information and a more detailed analysis of police sexual violence, see Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color (excerpts available at invisiblenomorebook.com).

A brief that addresses the question: what happens after we defund police? The brief puts forth a framework for the key elements required for sustainable and meaningful change in jurisdictions that are investing in non-law enforcement responses. It also uplifts 13 different strategies and approaches that can be used as alternatives to law enforcement. In surveying the landscape of such alternatives, CJP identified numerous programs and efforts that are currently in operation and reflect a spirit of innovation, are community-led, and work to address the root causes of conflict, harm, and violence. This brief touches just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these types of solutions.