Uniting Science, Policy, and Practice to Advance Smart Decarceration

• In Event: Policy Panel: Putting the "Smart" in the Smart Decarceration Movement: Using Research, Policy and Practice to Transform the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

Evidence increasingly suggests the United States is entering an era of decarceration, an era in which the U.S. will actively reduce the use of incarceration. This is not the first time that the country has tried to alter substantially an institution. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 had the goal of reducing the number of people in state psychiatric hospitals by 50 percent within a decade. Remarkably, the hospitalized population dropped by 60 percent over the next 12 years and continued to plummet. However, due to a lack of research and evidence combined with practice and policy, communities were not resourced or ready to provide alternative means of care for persons with serious mental illnesses. Today, these individuals are overrepresented in the prison population. The smart decarceration movement cannot afford to make the same mistakes. Smart decarceration approaches will seek to build social capacity in ways that are effective, sustainable, and socially just. Achieving this will occur by advancing innovative policy and practice interventions; identifying a range of exit strategies from the criminal justice system; and cultivating transector and transdisciplinary networks to form evidence-driven approaches and perspectives. This discussion will include cutting-edge approaches to uniting science, policy, and practice.

Author

• Carrie Pettus-Davis, Smart Decarceration Initiative