State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

8 Counties Advance Plans for Jail Reform

Route Fifty: Eight counties are implementing two-year plans for jail reform that will end their misuse and overuse, and thereby overincarceration, as part of the MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge.

Ada County, Idaho; Cook County, Illinois; Los Angeles County, California; Mecklenburg County, North Carolina; Multnomah County, Oregon; Palm Beach County, Florida; Pennington County, South Dakota; and Shelby County, Tennessee will receive grants ranging from $350,000 to $2 million to improve their criminal justice systems.

Jails see nearly 12 million admissions annually, 20 times the number of prison admissions, and about 70 percent of sentenced offenders and pretrial detainees are incarcerated for nonviolent traffic, property and drug offenses.

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