Core Strategies

There's a need to create a deeply-rooted, community-led coalition that is aligned around the right goals that are specific to community wants/needs to increase public safety. Members of communities should identify their own needs, barriers, and solutions. Community voices that have been most harmed by justice systems and lack of services should be prioritized. This is particularly true for BIPOC communities and individuals who have been harmed by systems as well as individuals. Strategies should include and uplift community voices at policy and decision-making tables.

To shift from equality to equity to liberation, lift up community voice to address alternatives to jail across housing and treatment continua. Using human centered design, partner with community and create flexible funding to create a continuum of services and alternatives to legal system involvement/intervention. Policy and budget decisions will be made with stakeholder input. Elected officials shall share power to support self-efficacy of community/neighborhood residents by standing behind the community instead of in front of it.

Criminal legal systems will collaborate with behavioral health to ensure services and treatments meet the needs of justice-involved individuals. Behavioral health help will not retraumatize people who need it. In collaboration with behavioral health providers and patients, we will reimagine, invest in, and create flexible, outcome-based behavioral health services that are much different from the continuum available today. Behavioral health providers and systems are integral in this reimagination. These services will be quality alternatives to incarceration. Behavioral health services need to be better resourced (including workforce) and be more culturally and gender specific.

Identify the laws and policies that are barriers change and create “off ramps” from the criminal legal system at every juncture. In this process, marginalized, over-targeted populations should be prioritized. The law and policy changes should be evaluated for effectiveness and tweaked as indicated.

This work requires community-wide buy-in for the vision. Elected officials who are aligned with this work should be identified and cultivated; they will be willing to take steps to move it forward. This work also requires a communications plan and education campaign that drives toward public buy-in for this work.

Create data-driven strategies that intentionally reduce racial and ethnic disparities (RED) in the criminal legal system. To do this, we must look very closely at, with intent to change, current policies and laws that harm communities of color disproportionately. We must also intentionally develop budget and policy shifts to prioritize non-criminal legal interventions for communities of color/BIPOC.

Public safety systems should incentivize everything and provide positive reinforcement (treatment, alternatives, system planning/community design work) rather than punitive measures. Be willing to create and use off ramps from the criminal legal system and innovate engagement by incentivizing participation and meeting people where they're really at.

• Build community-driven relationships with law enforcement that respect the community’s expertise

• Improve incarceration culture (center wellness)

• Use trauma/experiences as mitigation in prosecution and prosecute less

• Identify and eliminate collateral consequences

• Elimination of legal impediments to realizing this vision—mandatory minimums in particular

• Equip the criminal legal system workforce with the skills, background, resources (center wellness) needed to do the work

• Minimize criminal legal system impacts that occur early in life

• Eliminate fines, fees, and bail

Victims of all types of crime and violence shall help design processes, services, and supports that help individuals, families, and communities heal. Incorporate victim voices and develop options for survivors to access healing and restoration, particularly survivors of color who are historically the most harmed and least helped.

Partner with business community and trade organizations to generate job training and job opportunities and prioritize connections for people with criminal legal system involvement.

Encourage law enforcement to live in the neighborhoods they work in. Provide time for officers to engage in positive interactions with the community outside of crisis or calls for service. Include historical perspective and lived experience in officer trainings. Increase opportunities for community to build relationships with law enforcement.

Wellness should be a key strategy for people who work in public safety systems and those who have contact with it. Each provider, department, etc., will deploy strategies to increase wellness and all organizational cultures shall prioritize wellness. People employed in criminal justice system should focus on the overall wellness of themselves, the people they work with, and the community they serve.

Root causes of suffering and crime will be met and addressed outside the criminal legal system. In addition to significant enhancements and improvement to behavioral health systems, develop additional shelter, permanent supportive housing, and other housing supports/services with special focus on criminal legal system population. Other interventions to meet basic needs, like food insufficiency and employment supports, shall also be developed with meaningful participation of stakeholders. Public safety systems will make strides to decriminalize the challenges presented by houselessness and poverty.

Define and deploy accountability measures for systems, policies, and programs. Measure and evaluate consistently for efficacy, outcomes, equity, and cost.

Study, explore, and deploy alternatives that are proven to increase public safety. Victim-centered, restorative interventions are used in lieu of typical justice interventions to promote healing. Create choices for accountability for the person who caused harm to increase buy-in for responsibility and change. We should also increase use of community-centered alternatives, like probation in lieu of prison, community services, H.E.A.T. (Habilitation Empowerment Accountability Therapy), required volunteering, etc. Create options for survivors of harm or violence and their families to access services that are culturally specific, trauma informed, and do not require engagement with law enforcement.

Create a concrete list of budgets, legislative concepts, and policy changes to increase supports, resources, etc. to families. The goal with this strategy is to decrease the negative impact and consequences to families created by legal system involvement (including victims), incarceration, and imprisonment.

We acknowledge the negative impacts and barriers created by having a criminal record, even when an individual has served their time and exited the legal system. We should increase criminal expungements by identifying legislative and policy tasks and increase prosocial and volunteer opportunities for people with criminal records (for example, parents with criminal records shall not be excluded from volunteering at their child’s school).

First assess the breadth of the problem of collateral consequences in Multnomah County; identify all the ways our policies and laws create collateral consequences and remove as many as possible. We can also better utilize the Family Sentencing Alternatives Program (FSAP) in Multnomah County to keep families together and use more diversion and restorative justice alternatives to keep people from being incarcerated and increase wellness of communities and families.