Choosing redemption over imprisonment

The Massachusetts Federal District Court’s RISE rehabilitation program facilitates a restorative justice workshop in which people responsible for crimes have conversations with victims of similar crimes to help them understand the impacts of their crimes and make amends.

Under a structured parole system, since March 2024, Nepal's Federal Probation and Parole Board has released 2,993 prisoners early, successfully reintegrating offenders into society and easing prison overcrowding, with a violation rate of just 2.98%.

To keep low-level crime cases out of the court process, courts in Manhattan are allowing people to take workshops on overdose intervention, social resilience, or restorative justice instead. The aim is to provide early intervention in cases that will likely be dismissed, prevent potential collateral consequences of having a charge on record, and free up staff to focus on issues like violent crime.

Risk assessments are supposed to make the criminal justice system better by predicting which defendants are likely to commit new crimes. Defendant scores are given to judges during criminal sentencing in nine states, and there’s a push to mandate their use in federal prisons. But the risk assessments aren’t accurate, only somewhat more reliable than a coin flip. Black defendants are falsely flagged as future criminals at a high rate while white defendants regularly get mislabeled as low risk.

Partners for Justice embeds trained "client advocates" inside public defenders' offices to address defendants' nonlegal needs (such as: housing, addiction treatment, and mental health services). This has demonstrably improved outcomes, including a nearly 50% increase in case dismissals or diversions in Delaware County and a fivefold increase in public service referrals across New Jersey pilot counties.

Jharkhand, India, created an awareness campaign about the laws related to human trafficking that reached all the ranks of the police department, the judiciary, and other relevant state departments. Now, the state has the country’s highest conviction rate for human trafficking.

Brazil’s Federal Police created a database of gold samples from different regions of the country to help confirm the origins of gold suspected to be illegally traded. Each sample is analyzed to understand its molecular composition, atomic structure, and morphological features. That information can be cross-referenced for matches with suspicious gold during investigations.

In some states, cash bail has been eliminated and this measure has seen significant results including lower jail populations, lower re-offense rates for people released on bonds and less jail time for those accused of low-level crimes. These results in states with bail reform laws suggest that bail reform works and serves as inspiration for other states looking to enact similar policies.

When prosecutors in Boston and Baltimore stopped prosecuting certain non-violent, minor offenses, crime of all sorts, from minor to violent, went down. Getting prosecuted and jailed can in itself increase the probability that people will get in more trouble. When their mistakes are not compounded by an arrest record that limits their job and housing prospects, they are apt to stay out of trouble. The prosecutors and research found that simply excluding cases of non-violent, minor drug possession, disorderly conduct, shoplifting from the system does not encourage more crime; probably the opposite.

The Colorado Pretrial Assessment Tool uses a formula to weigh the risk of releasing someone from jail while they await trial. While prosecutors say the tool is better than nothing, critics, backed by a study of the tool's effects, say it disproportionately harms people of color and people experiencing homelessness. Risk assessment algorithms consider a number of facts about a defendant's past and present to predict whether they can leave jail without committing new crimes or failing to make court appearances. But because they penalize already-overpoliced populations, they are not considered objective.