Using Indicators to Understand Attitudes and Inform Criminal Justice Reform

• In Event: Pluralism in Attitudes Toward American Government

Abstract

Recent years have seen increasing concern with the role of criminal justice agencies in shaping Americans’ views of government. Policing, incarceration, and others punitive activities are especially important for how residents of low-income and minority communities perceive public institutions. At the same time, many of these communities are now coalescing on a new vision for safety, centered on upfront investments in collective wellbeing and a menu of culturally appropriate wraparound systems. Community members want to see appropriate, effective and equitable policy reforms, resulting in practices that maintain safety while minimizing harm to community members.

In this paper, we ask: How would we design and assess criminal justice reforms if the concept of “safety” was truly being defined by communities themselves? Central to this idea is an understanding that individuals in over-policed and under-served neighborhoods have distinct experiences and understandings of what it means to be safe. We consider how “bottom-up” approaches to measurement, combined with researcher-practitioner partnerships, can inform our understanding of public opinion towards police. Using data from an Everyday Indicators project in the City of Oakland, we show how this type of research can help move “Defund Police” as an aspirational idea toward “Re-Imagining Safety” as a scalable, replicable model for systemic reform.

Authors

• Amy E. Lerman, UC Berkeley

• Naomi Levy, Santa Clara University