AltReform

The gap between a surveillance system and a stabilization system is a 9-percentage-point drop in re-arrest in New York City. It is 10 billion dollars a year in avoidable incarceration costs. It is the difference between a system that monitors failure and one that prevents it. altreform.org

We are recommending a First Diversion Act. A dedicated federal grant program for pre-arrest diversion and stabilization services funded at the scale of the Second Chance Act would do for the front end of the system what Second Chance did for reentry. The evidence base already exists. #CriminalJustice

The federal funding gap tells the whole story. The Second Chance Act has deployed over 600 million dollars since 2009 primarily for reentry placement. The Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Programme runs at 30 million a year. The field works where the money is. #CriminalJusticePolicy

Mental health diversion does not reliably reduce recidivism on its own. But it consistently cuts jail time in half. Court-based diversion averaged 60 jail days versus 131 in comparison groups. Preventing incarceration is itself a stabilizing outcome because it prevents job loss and housing disruption.

A light-touch misdemeanor diversion program hit an 86 percent completion rate. Participants showed arrest odds 73 percent lower and conviction odds 75 percent lower at the 3-year follow-up. Lower burden programs produce higher completion and higher completion produces better outcomes. #Diversion

The most important number in our research is 10 billion. That is what the United States spends every year incarcerating people for technical violations. Not new crimes. Conditions they violated while trying to stay out. A surveillance system charges you 10 billion dollars to produce nothing. #AltReform

Bail reform in rural areas produced neutral results where the same reform in New York City produced substantial reductions in reoffending. The difference was service infrastructure. Removing a destabilizing contact only works when people have something stable to return to. #BailReform

Supervision conditions need to be capped. The average probation order carries 17 standard conditions. Most of them have no relationship to an individual person's actual risks. Matching conditions to documented criminogenic needs and nothing else would reduce violations without touching crime rates.

The reason the reform field moves slowly is structural. Compliance contacts fit on a dashboard. Employment stability at 12 months does not. Grant cycles reward what is measurable and what is measurable is almost never the thing that actually keeps someone stable. #PolicyReform #CriminalJustice

Missouri reduced its supervised population by 18 percent and shortened over 36000 sentences. Reoffending did not go up. North Carolina expanded supervision in the same period and 3-year reincarceration rose from 25 percent to 36 percent. Less surveillance produced better outcomes. #CriminalJustice

The field funds job placement because it is easy to count and report to grant-makers. Job retention at 12 months is harder to measure and harder to fund. We are building systems around what is measurable rather than what actually stabilizes a life. That is a structural problem. #Reentry #Reform

People got jobs through employment reentry programs. They were 2.5 times more likely to work at least one day and added 59 days of employment on average. But sustained employment at the end of the study period showed no significant effect. Getting a job is not the same as keeping one. #Reentry

That California experiment has been running nationally for 20 years. The result is 10 billion dollars spent every year incarcerating people for technical violations that produce no reduction in crime at all. That money buys nothing in public safety terms. #ProbationReform #CriminalJustice

California ran the cleanest experiment on intensive supervision anyone has done. High-risk probationers were randomly assigned to intensive monitoring or standard probation. After 12 months the arrest rates were identical. Technical violations ran 65 percent versus 38 percent. #ProbationReform

Expungement is not symbolic. It removes the structural barrier that a criminal record creates around employment. Diversion without expungement leaves that barrier standing. Every diversion law should require automatic record sealing the moment someone completes the program. #CriminalJustice

We call this the Stabilization Principle. Alternatives to incarceration work when they preserve employment, housing and family ties. These are the social anchors that system contact destroys. Adding surveillance without addressing those anchors consistently produces nothing. #AltReform

At the same time New York expanded supervised release, more defendants went home under active monitoring with more conditions attached. Recidivism did not move at all. The program that worked removed a destabilizing contact. The one that added oversight changed nothing. #CriminalJustice

New York eliminated cash bail and 50 months of data came in. Re-arrest fell 9 percentage points. Felony re-arrest fell 7. Violent felony re-arrest fell 5. The critics predicted the opposite. The data proved them wrong. #BailReform #CriminalJustice

The system has been asking the wrong question for decades. It keeps asking how much monitoring someone needs. The evidence is clear that the real question is what a person needs to stay stable. Those questions produce completely different systems. #CriminalJusticeReform #AltReform

NYC eliminated cash bail. 50 months later: re-arrest down 9 points. Felony re-arrest down 7 points. Violent felony re-arrest down 5 points. The critics were wrong. The data is in. #BailReform #CriminalJustice