Dear John,

The Sentencing Project released a report outlining five social interventions that can be implemented by U.S. policymakers and community members to improve public safety without increasing the reliance on mass incarceration. The report, “Ending Mass Incarceration: Safety Beyond Sentencing,” offers recommendations that hold promise for making the country’s communities both safer and more equitable.

The five social interventions include:

Implementing community-based safety solutions: Community-based interventions could help decrease violence without incarceration. Such interventions include violence interruption programs that identify and treat people most at risk of violence, detect and interrupt conflicts, and work to change social norms, as well as changes to the built environment, like adding green spaces, cleaning up vacant lots, and improving street lighting.
Transforming crisis response: Reliance on police to address the needs of all crisis situations, including responding to people with mental health emergencies, is ineffective and dangerous. Investments in trained community-based responders with expertise in public health approaches have the potential to reduce police shootings, improve safety, and decrease incarceration.
Reducing unnecessary justice involvement: Ending unnecessary police contact and court involvement by decriminalizing certain non-public safety offenses (e.g. loitering) and implementing strategies that avoid formal arrest or prosecution (i.e. diversion programs) can improve safety.
Ending the drug war: Shifting away from criminalizing people who use drugs toward public health solutions can improve public health and safety. Improving access to harm reduction services, such as needle exchanges and offering places where people can use drugs in a community setting to prevent overdoses (i.e. supervised consumption sites), can reduce other negative outcomes of drug use.
Strengthening opportunities for youth: Interventions like summer employment opportunities and training youth in effective decision-making skills are promising means of preventing criminal legal involvement.

With 2023 marking 50 years of mass incarceration in the U.S., there’s a clear need to reimagine our public safety infrastructure. Research shows these interventions are more effective at reducing crime and improving public safety, more cost-effective, and more equitable than punitive responses that rely on over-policing and mass incarceration. This country has a powerful opportunity to expand on programs that improve safety while scaling back incarceration.