Prosecutors Explore New Solutions to Public Safety Concerns: A Conversation about the ‘Smart Prosecution Initiative’

The Bureau of Justice Assistance at U.S. Department of Justice created the Smart Prosecution Initiative to encourage prosecutors to explore new solutions to public safety problems. Grant recipients work with researchers to document outcomes and develop effective, economical, and innovative responses to crime. In this podcast, Denise O’Donnell, the director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, sits down with Jose Egurbide of the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office and Mark Kammerer of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office to talk about their Smart Prosecution programs, which use risk assessment tools to divert low-level offenders from court. The conversation took place while the three were in Chicago to attend Community Justice 2016. At Community Justice 2016: Above, Denise O’Donnell, director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, delivers her keynote address. Below left, Jose Egurbide of the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office participates in a panel on Restorative Justice. Right, Mark Kammerer of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office discusses Risk/Needs Assessments on a panel.   ROB WOLF: Hi. This is Rob Wolf, director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation. We are at Community Justice 2016 where 400 people have gathered in Chicago for 3 days to share ideas about justice reform. With me are 3 people who are leaders of efforts to improve justice systems both locally and nationally: Denise O’Donnell is the director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance at the Department of Justice; Mark Kammerer is the Supervisor of Alternative Prosecution and the Sentencing Unit at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office; and Jose Egurbide is the Supervising Attorney in the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office. Something you all have in common is a grant program supported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance called the Smart Prosecution Initiative. Denise O’Donnell, I thought maybe you could explain what the Smart Prosecution Initiative is and how the Bureau is using it to support innovation and test new ideas. DENISE O’DONNELL: Sure. I’m a former prosecutor, and when I came to BJA I felt we really didn’t have enough focus on prosecutors and the role prosecutors can play in justice reform. We had a great program called Smart Policing that had been operating for a number of years that actually funded police practitioner partnerships- research partnerships to look at innovative approaches and collect data, analyze them and assess the outcomes of the program. We brainstormed a little about that and thought it was a great model for prosecutors as well. So prosecutors can innovate. They can try new approaches. They can work with a researcher, collect data and work on programs like diversion programs, like community justice centers, and so many other initiatives. It’s now part of a smart suite of programs at BJA. We now have 9 programs working in this model to really promote criminal justice innovation. WOLF: Mark and Jose, now both of you have grants under the Smart Prosecution Initiative. They’re similar in that they’re both helping divert offenders from more traditional sentences. Let me ask you both, why would a prosecutor’s office be interested in diverting people from punishments that would get them more deeply involved in the justice system? Mark, do you want to go first? MARK KAMMERER: Sure. We’ve actually been involved in diversion for decades. When I came to the office in 2000, there was a drug diversion program that had been around since the 70’s, but one of the things we found with a lot of our alternative sentencing, basically treatment courts, is that people had engaged in significant criminal activity before they got to treatment court. What we wanted to do was possibly intervene with people at an earlier stage, with the hope being we could interrupt the cycle before they got to the point where they had significant background that would warrant being in an intensive 24 month probation program. Our office has been, especially in the last 4 or 5 years, very involved in diverting people out of the system as early as possible. We’ve implemented a medical model that people are diverted at the earliest point with the least amount of intervention possible, knowing that we have a whole system- a whole continuum that we could advance to another level if needs be. The Smart Prosecution process, the grant that we received with that, was to … We were able to involve risk assessment in our process. One of my experiences from working in healthcare is you really need to objectify things as much as possible so we know who it is that we’re working with, and why we’re working with them, and what would be the best interventions. That was one of the gaps in our system, was we did not have sufficient risk assessment involvement. That was a cornerstone of the proposal that we made to BJA that was funded. WOLF: I know, Jose, your initiative as well, you’re diverting people and you’re also doing risk assessment. Let me just ask you, I thought prosecutors classically are interested in guilt and innocence. What does a risk assessment tool, like both your programs use, do for you? JOSE EGURBIDE: Thanks, Rob. We’re very excited to be here. Of course we’re very grateful for BJA’s leadership and the opportunities that that’s creating as well as the CCI risk and needs assessment tool. What that’s doing for us is, it’s giving us an alternative to an already congested court system where we can focus more on rehabilitation and, as Mark said, looking at it at the front end. You often see a lot of rehabilitation happening upon reentry.  We also believe that when you talk about alternative prosecution, when you talk about restorative justice, you need to restore the victim, you need to restore the community, but you also need to restore the offender to a position where they’ll be a more productive member of society going forward. WOLF: Let’s talk a little bit specifically about what a risk assessment tool is. You both use a similar tool that the Center for Court Innovation developed with Bureau of Justice Assistance support. It’s evidence based, it’s been tested, but tell me how it actually functions. What does it tell you and what does it allow you to do? EGURBIDE: A needs and risk assessment tool … and now there are some tools that are just risk assessment. The Center for Court Innovation tool that we use was selected specifically because it also focuses on a needs assessment. So again, when you talk about restorative justice, our program, the Neighborhood Justice Program, intercepts those individuals at the pre-filing stage, before a case- a criminal case is ever filed against them.  That allows us to take a look at needs responsivity, take a look at what are some of the dynamic risk factors that this individual exhibits and be able to fashion out either resources or obligations that will address those needs and that risk. I think when you’re talking about, as Denise was mentioning, Smart Prosecution, this is an evidence based approach that will lead to better outcomes. It will lead to a lower level of recidivism. WOLF: So Mark, what do you do? You get the results of the assessment and then what kinds of sentences, or I guess they’re not formal sentences because it’s diversion, but what kind of services are you linking the offenders to? KAMMERER: One of the things that we were able to do with our Smart Prosecution grant program was to give specific types of interventions to people based on the level of their risk. What had happened in the past, we had a misdemeanor diversion program without risk assessment and everybody that was eligible for other reasons, all received the exact same intervention with the exact same expectations. Now with this program, we divide- the CCI tool divides people into low, medium and high risk levels and so we have a different expectation of people, what they need to do in order to have their case dismissed based on the level of their risk. What we do is, people at the lowest levels have an intervention and maybe an assessment and a referral to services; at the high end, are required to be engaged in a cognitive behavioral therapy program. We’re looking at changing criminogenic thinking for people that are higher risk. A side benefit for us has been the ability… is to show that people with a higher level of risk can be just as successful in a program like this as the people with a low level of risk. We’ve actually been able to expand our eligibility criteria in terms of charging within the time period that we’ve been with this grant funding. People who would not have been eligible when we started this program, now are eligible because we’ve been able to show people with a little higher risk are not really a higher risk, they just need a different intervention. WOLF: Just for people who are listening who might not be familiar with the risk needs re...