Propelling Change Video Spotlight: District Attorney Spencer Merriweather
April 29, 2023
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Topics
Corrections
Corrections agencies are grappling with a unique combination of public safety challenges, including stubborn rates of recidivism and high costs. We work with corrections administrators in all 50 states to help develop comprehensive plans to combat those challenges.
Crisis Response
To reduce overreliance on police officers—particularly as first responders to people in behavioral health crisis—many communities are expanding their crisis response options. These responses are best implemented as part of a larger comprehensive, coordinated system, informed by community crisis data, and led by a diverse group of community stakeholders. Our team works with jurisdictions across the country that are serving as laboratories for innovation to ensure that behavioral health crises receive the appropriate response.
Economic Mobility
Access to meaningful employment is a key component in reducing recidivism and creates pathways to increased economic mobility. Yet people with juvenile and criminal records—especially Black people—suffer from an alarmingly high and stubborn unemployment rate. Our team works with states and local communities to reduce structural barriers and expand access to quality career technical education, training programs, and other workforce supports that increase employment opportunities for people with records.
Families
For the millions of children with a parent in prison or jail, separation from their parent is traumatic and can have long-term effects on their development. For parents who are incarcerated, strong family relationships are an essential source of support. And youth detained and incarcerated in juvenile justice facilities are removed from their natural supports, negatively impacting their stability and well-being. Our team works with justice agencies and community-based organizations to promote programs that cultivate relationships and engage families in the reentry process.
Housing
Finding safe, stable housing can be one of the most immediate and dire challenges people face when they are diverted from or leave prison or jail. Limited affordable housing options, coupled with policy barriers and stigmas associated with a criminal record, present significant challenges, particularly for people with behavioral health needs. Our team works with states and local communities to develop cross-system solutions that help connect people in the justice system with the permanent housing and the supportive services they need.
Juvenile Justice
While youth incarceration rates have dropped dramatically over the past decade, most juvenile justice systems are not operating as effectively as possible. Our team works with communities across the country to adopt and more effectively implement policies and practices shown to reduce recidivism and improve other youth outcomes.
Law Enforcement
Increasingly, law enforcement officers are the first, and often the only, responders to calls involving people with behavioral health needs. Our team works with communities across the country to support law enforcement leaders and officers to improve their responses to this growing population.
Mental Health
Across the country, communities are struggling to address the high number of people with mental health needs cycling through the criminal justice system each year. In many communities, correctional facilities provide more treatment for people with mental illnesses than community-based mental health providers do. Our team works with states and local communities to improve responses for people with mental health needs in the criminal justice system.
Reentry
Each year, millions of people return to their communities from jail or prison. Ensuring people’s safe and successful transition from incarceration to the community is challenging and highly complex. Reentry is more than staying out of jail or prison; it also involves reuniting families, eliminating barriers to employment, finding stable housing, and much more. Our team works with communities across the country to provide people with the reentry supports they need.
Substance Use
A disproportionate number of people in the criminal justice system struggle with substance use disorders, many of whom also have co-occurring mental illnesses. Despite the success of some treatment programs for people in the criminal justice system, just a fraction of the people who need these services receive them. Our team works with communities across the U.S. to promote and bring models of success to scale.
Victims
Survivors of violent crime endure financial, social, mental, and physical pain and suffering, which greatly reduces quality of life. Our team works collaboratively with jurisdictions to understand the experiences and effects of victimization, increase access to victim services, and improve systemic responses through restitution and victim compensation programs. These efforts help lead to recovery and provide pathways to healing.
