The MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) helps participating localities employ data-driven, community-informed strategies to safely reduce the number of people in jails. SJC sites in small communities and urban centers alike have successfully reduced the misuse and overuse of jails by forging creative partnerships to stand up diversion programs, increasing access to behavioral health services and treatment, and implementing equity-based policy solutions like bail reform. But despite overall reductions in jail populations,¹ significant disparities in pretrial incarceration persist—or have increased—for people of color in these communities,² including those with behavioral health needs, who are diverted at lower rates, retained in jail longer, and connected to services or treatment at a lower rate than White people.³

Over-policing in communities of color and disparities in pretrial decision-making, including prosecutorial discretion and bail decisions, have contributed to disproportionate incarceration rates of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) individuals in local jails, a legacy of centuries of institutional and systemic racism. Though it has garnered less attention than the justice system, the behavioral health system has similarly pervasive systemic inequities. BIPOC individuals have faced racism, misdiagnosis, pathologizing of racial and cultural differences, and lack of access to care. As a result, BIPOC individuals are less likely to receive needed care in the community and more likely to receive poor quality care when treated, with one 2021 report finding that only 39 percent of Black and African Americans who reported having a mental illness received mental health services compared to 52 percent of non-Hispanic White people.⁴

As counties and cities work to combat disparities in the justice and behavioral health systems at different stages in their initiatives—from identifying the problem to adopting new policies and interventions—initiative leaders need guidance about where to start and how to keep momentum going after an initial push. Much can be learned from SJC sites’ experience sustaining a commitment to racial equity over time as the initial energy wanes, political priorities shift, staff and champions move on, and new challenges emerge.

About the Guide

This guide is intended to support communities working to center racial equity in their initiatives to reduce the overrepresentation of people with behavioral health needs in local criminal justice systems. Organized by key phases of program design (Exploratory Phase; Planning Phase; Implementation Phase; and Sustainability Phase), the guide invites leaders working on justice reform to pause and ask themselves important questions about how they are approaching racial equity and offers promising strategies to proactively center equity throughout an initiative. It is grounded in the idea that racial equity is both an outcome and a process. As described by Race Forward, “as an outcome, we achieve racial equity when race no longer determines one’s socioeconomic outcomes and when everyone has what they need to thrive, no matter where they live. As a process, we apply racial equity when people most impacted by structural racial inequity are meaningfully involved in the creation and implementation of the institutional policies and practices that impact their lives.”⁵

Centering racial equity in initiatives will look different in every community. The questions in this guide are complex and rarely have clear, simple solutions. To that end, no singular strategy is positioned as an “answer” to the guiding questions listed in each section. Rather, they are ideas to consider with community partners that may fit for a given community or may lead to different strategies that better serve local priorities. Further, while each section is designed to serve as a stand-alone resource, questions and strategies may overlap or be relevant at different points depending on the unique characteristics of the initiative and community context.

Key Terms

Disparity: “Disparities occur when one group experiences a certain outcome at a higher rate than another group.”⁶

Equity: “The fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all people, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups.”⁷

Racial Equity: The condition that would be achieved if race was “no longer a predictor of outcomes, leading to more just outcomes in policies, practices, attitudes, and cultural messages.”⁸

Racial Equity Lens: A lens that sheds light on racial dynamics that shape social, economic, and political structures. Using a racial equity lens means analyzing data and information about race and ethnicity, understanding disparities and the reasons they exist, looking at the structural root causes of problems, naming race explicitly when talking about problems and solutions, and taking intentional actions to address and eradicate inequity.⁹

Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, immigration status, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group. This concept is regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.¹⁰