Is the Answer to Crime More Cops?

Thanks to an agreement between the U.S. government and a consortium of companies including Intuit and H&R Block, 70 percent of taxpayers are supposed to have access to free online tax preparation services. But Free File is confusing and poorly publicized. Only about 3 percent of eligible tax returns over the last 16 years used the system.

A project launched in the United Kingdom uses social-impact bonds to reduce recidivism among prisoners, bringing together public and private resources to implement more effective and cost efficient social programs. Their success is inspiring other countries to follow suit.

Black Soil, a nonprofit organization founded in 2017, supports Kentucky's Black farmers through direct investment, grant assistance, and market connections while bridging information gaps that prevent farmers from accessing existing government programs.

Fairfax County, Virginia, boasts the state's most ambitious program to divert cases from criminal prosecution to treatment courts, including for drug offenses and involving veterans. But all of the work by prosecutors to deliver a more therapeutic form of justice ends up penalizing the county under the state's formula for funding of prosecutor offices, which rewards felony convictions. Because the true workload isn't reflected in the funding, Fairfax has faced staffing shortage, leading to conflicts with the police over inaction on certain cases. The state has begun a lengthy study of the issue.

A decade after California established its forest offset program as a way to incentivize saving trees to store carbon, a new analysis shows that it might not be working. Loopholes in the program allow for people to claim credits for trees that aren’t delivering the carbon benefits they should and ultimately results in companies emitting more pollution than is being stored. While this program has provided economic benefits for several Indigenous tribes, some argue that “the program creates the false appearance of progress when in fact it makes the climate problem worse.”

In 2017, Ohio’s Fairfield County built a new jail that, for the first time in a long time, met minimum jail standards. Using bonds, the new jail included an increase in the amount of living space, better security standards, and more space and capacity for classes like drug and alcohol programming, GED prep, and job skill building. Six hours north, Wayne County looks to Fairfield as they face pushback in their attempts to create a new jail with similar improvements.

The Bail Project is posting bond for men and women who cannot afford to pay and haven’t been convicted of a crime. Based in Detroit, the nonprofit has locations across the country and uses a revolving fund to bail out individuals, meaning once the bond is recovered, the funding is then available for another person. Its Detroit location has bailed out nearly 200 individuals in an effort to end mass incarceration and prove that holding people – most of whom are people of color or experiencing poverty – does not diminish recidivism.

Across the country, police departments are increasingly providing mental health services for law enforcement. Among the services deployed are internal support teams, post-incident debriefs, psychological first aid, and wellness and stress education. While they may take different forms and approaches, they are all driven by the need to support and manage the stress and trauma that come with the job.

Denver has formed a law enforcement collaborative, called the Regional Anti Violence Enforcement Network (RAVEN), to bring together eleven agencies to solve gun crimes in the surrounding cities and counties. RAVEN was borne out of Denver’s Crime Gun Intelligence Center – an earlier collaboration – and uses the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network to share information, technology and resources, and identify regional patterns of crimes rather than local, isolated events.

The murder of a woman in Wisconsin highlights a lethality assessment tool for law enforcement to use that’s designed to help domestic victims and authorities understand how much danger victims might be in and help police connect them with services. It’s proven effective at helping those facing domestic violence take steps to reduce the chances they might be murdered by their partners. But getting it implemented, especially in rural areas where there may not be many resources for victims, has proven challenging with less than half of Wisconsin’s counties using it.