- [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club forums and Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) (bell dings) - Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland home to conversations of consequence that helped democracy thrive.

I'm Robyn Minter Smyers a partner at the law firm, Thompson Hine, as well as a City Club board member and immediate past president.

I am so pleased today to introduce our forum, which is the Lozick Law Enforcement Forum, as well as the final forum of 2021 in our Criminal Justice series in partnership with The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation.

You may have heard Cuyahoga County is poised to build a new justice center overhauling or replacing the justice center is expected to be one of the largest expenditures in the county's history.

Yet this is a construction project that is much more than a new building.

It's a unique opportunity to either create the conditions for criminal justice reform to truly take hold or to cement the status quo.

Our guests here today, Karen Chinn is president of Chinn Planning Inc. A Women's Business Enterprise certified consulting firm.

She has over 35 years of experience in government and public sector consulting and has served as a member of the Federal Advisory Committee on juvenile justice and the International Association of Chiefs of Police to name just a few of her roles.

But most important to the conversation here today, Karen was part of the group of national consultants who assisted Cuyahoga County leadership in evaluating reforms needed.

It was an assessment of Cuyahoga County's entire criminal justice system, and the factors that have an impact on things like jail population and the rate of court filings.

What did Karen's findings say and how can they help inform the construction of this new justice center?

Moderating the conversation today is Rachel Dissell, Accountability Mentor for the Cleveland Documenters and a contributing writer for the Marshall Project.

And just this week, the Marshall Project announced that they're launching a new criminal justice, news operation in Cleveland.

Rachel was also a reporter at the Plain Dealer from 2002 until 2020.

Guests, members, and friends of the City Club of Cleveland.

Please join me in welcoming Karen Chinn and Rachel Dissell.

(audience clapping) - Wow, that's good to be back in this room and in person and seeing so many familiar faces to be here for this important conversation.

So for those who have not been kind of closely following this, because we've all had a lot going on pandemic and other stuff, it would be good if we could go back a couple of years in the process, so we're all kind of speaking from the same place.

So in August of 2019, just some months before we knew we were in a pandemic, Karen, you gave a pretty comprehensive presentation to county and elected officials about what you had learned about this planning process for the jail.

And I'm wondering if you can talk about some key choices that the county was facing at that time, and maybe give a little bit of an overview of what some of your recommendations were.

- Well, we are going to go back about two and a half years because that's when that study actually started.

So I want to be clear on the date of the assessment that I did.

And I'm going to talk about today was stuff that I collected in end of 2018 through 2019, but I was hired as part of a large team to come in and look at developing a plan for a new justice center.

And I looked at some previous studies that had been done and actually one that was done to assess the justice center building itself.

And there was one page in that report devoted to how many beds for the jail, what would be needed in the future.

So my role in the project and coming into that was to look comprehensively at the criminal justice system and particularly what drives the jail population and what kind of future the Cuyahoga County want in terms of the number of beds and the capacity.

So my role was to really look at data trends, socioeconomic factors.

I interviewed over 65 various human service agencies that certainly have the best handle on population in the jail, and then came forth the set of recommendations for basically the county.

I think it was a set of best as we had a choice to look at, replicating the justice system that you currently have and building that out in the future or looking at reform and what that would mean in terms of jail capacity, which was my particular focus was on the jail.

- So I'm sort of a data geek.

You gathered a lot of information.

I spent time reading over probably over a hundred slides I mean, I was really fascinated, but particularly when it comes to the jail population, what did you learn most about that, that kind of informed your recommendations when you were gathering the data and also, was there any information that was missing that made it hard to kind of give the recommendations that you gave?

- Well, certainly it came out in this study there's data in this county is really a challenge and not just within individual components, because it is a criminal justice system and their city, state and county agencies, and there's different, judges have a role to play, prosecutors have a role to play the public defender and whatever systems are data systems within individual components, they're not integrated.

So data was a real big problem.

One thing that I pointed out was that I've never worked in a jurisdiction where I couldn't get arrest data, just county arrest data.

And that was something I hadn't run across.

But what I was looking for specifically were the kind of factors that I'm seeing around the country and looking at data that could perhaps informed decisions on better ways to deal with population in the county, as opposed to just being in the jail.

So I started by looking at many previous studies that have been done by very reputable organizations that focused on the number of people that were in for a very long period of time and a pre-trial status.

And as pointed out, the jail is primarily a pretrial population had been found guilty, but even people that were bonding out were sitting in the jail for eight days, a huge percent of the population that we're in for over 30 or 60 or 90 days, which we know by that point in time, any protective factors that people have like a job, a place to live, or access to their children, all those protective factors start to just melt away.

And so it really is like a ripple effect.

I also looked very closely at all the socioeconomic data in this county, looking at homelessness, drug addiction, opioid crisis, child abuse and neglect, because those are factors that really play out in our jail population.

And there's great national research and evidence that talks about more effective ways to deal with those issues than just putting people in jail.

So that was a really important part of the process was to get that data, to make the case that here are some of the ways you could look at a different future than just a larger jail.

- So when you started doing this work in Cuyahoga County, we also were grappling with not only an unprecedented number of people in the jail, but also humans dying in the jail that was understaffed.

And the public was also starting to learn that there were even officials that might view this jail as a moneymaker.

So that's a lot going on when you're trying to do a study and it's already complex, you know, already has a lot of factors.

How did you bring that information into what you were doing and kind of, what was your response to those issues as you carried through your work to make recommendations?

- Well, the first week on the project, I hadn't been in the jail.

And so I had the opportunity to tour the jail.

And I think Jeff Appelbaum was with me when I toured it.

And I said, this is one of the worst, if not the worst jail that I've been to an American 37 years it's just not a humane environment, some things were pointed out by The Bail Project a few minutes ago are absolutely true.

And we know so much in this country that the population in a jail has a 40 or 50% or more have mental health issues.

And the jail environment just exacerbates all of that.

And so the dark and dankness in the first place when you come into the jail and the booking and area, just everything that I saw does not reflect what, again, I believe should be a humane environment and to have a jail, a new jail is definitely needed.

I want to make it clear, in my opinion, it's the size of the jail that really needs to be looked at because when you do have to incarcerate people for very serious offenses, they still need to be in a good humane environment, makes this safer for other defendants in the jail.

It makes it safer for staff.

And there probably could be better outcomes certainly when you talk about a mental health and substance abuse population, which drives every jail across the country.

So that's the kind of data that I was looking at in the jail and the conditions there, and try to look at who is in for how long, for what reason, what are the offenses?

Do you have a high percentage of population that are in there for technical violations of probation or some kind of community supervision, because they're more effective ways than putting them back in the jail, not a new offense, but a dirty urine, or they didn't appear where they were supposed to appear or didn't make an appointment.

And that's not an effective use of the jail for trying to change that behavior.

So it was a combination of a horrible environment and in my assessment in which I presented many more cost-effective and human effective ways of dealing with that population.

- Can you talk a little bit more about how you do that in terms of giving recommendations?

So there's a lot of numbers to crunch.

You know, what the population will be of the county, what we think crime will be like.

And you mentioned that you didn't have a lot of arrest data.

I think you said 24 or 48 agencies that make arrests we're not providing arrest data.

So there's a little bit of guesswork there, but how do you take those numbers and what we think might happen, and then really combine that with some of these human elements about what we might want to see for humans in our community that is not being in an overcrowded jail, even if it's a new jail, how do you take that and turn that into recommendations that you gave to the kind of decision-makers in the county?

- Well, I always look at crime and arrest data and everybody thinks that's what drives the jail population.

But in fact, I mean, I've seen places where the crime rates gone up and the jail population has gone down and vice versa.

So what I hone in on certainly collected crime and arrest data and what I did find is that population in Cuyahoga County is down, the number of court filings are down substantially, crime rate, which is the seven index crimes per 1000 population that was down.

Every indicator, what people might think would drive a jail population was actually on the decline in Cuyahoga County.

The only thing that was up was the average daily population in the jail.

So then it was really important to look at.

And I presented again, the socioeconomic factors and drivers that are really driving the jail population.

That's 60% of the population in jail has some serious mental health issues that a lot of people in jail, they are simply in this crisis in our country because they can't afford to bond out for very low level of bonds that were set even a thousand dollars to $2,000.

You'd have to post a $100.

There's people in jail for one month, two months or three months because they can't come up with that small amount of money, which is a great thing that The Bail Project does around the country.

So it was to look at all that information and be able to bring it back to decision makers, to say, you can keep using the jail this way, or we can look at a different future and what I'm able to do, and certainly everybody can find the research and read news articles across the country.

There are many reform initiatives that have really like the elimination of cash bail, or you've got some examples right here in your community development of a pretrial screening instrument, where instead of holding someone in the jail before their appearance at court, supervising them in the community to assure their appearance in court and the City of Cleveland developed that comprehensive program and brought the failure to appear rate down substantially.

So there's all kinds of evidence has been presented by the MacArthur Foundation, Annie Casey Foundation, and several other great organizations that really dive in and look at what are the factors that are driving the jail population.

And what we find through every jail in America is that sort of has become the social agency of last resort.

And there's a better way to deal with the human factor of that.

Also not surprisingly in this jail and every jail that I'm doing, assessment, very high disproportionate representation of minorities in the jail population.

And that's something that certainly pointed out as part of the study.

So there's ways that we can do things differently in the future that would result in a smaller jail.

And I do want to say again that even if it's a two bed jail, I believe that what I've seen, you need a new jail in this county.

I think it's really good that I was able to work with the project manager that also supported a smaller jail, because there are many things that can be done.

And that's why I came up with a recommendation for a much smaller jail than you currently have.

- So when you're doing this work, you interviewed about 65 people who are connected to the system to help inform your recommendations.

That includes folks involved with bail reform, re-entry, mental health providers.

But one thing that I noticed was that none of those folks are decision-makers in this process.

You know, they inform your report, but they're not at the table.

The folks at the table to make the decisions are the folks who kind of run the system.

So based on what you were learning in those interviews, should we be making these decisions differently?

Should some of those folks be at the table so that the result is different?

- Well, I certainly think that there's, I mean, there is collaboration within this county in terms of some of the meetings that I attended in different forums and individual interviews with health and human service and mental health providers and substance abuse providers.

But there's certainly to move forward and to have reform and to maintain and to build a smaller jail.

It's going to take everybody at the table, the leadership positions, but they have to have that input because the jail population literally is made up of people that are needed to access those community services.

And in several of my individual interviews, it would became very obvious that either there wasn't adequate services in the community, or there was a disconnect when someone entered the jail, let's say they were on medication for mental illness.

They weren't maintaining that medication in the jail.

And then there's, you know, things just kind of get spiraled out of control.

So I'm not going to speak to who should be making the final decision in Cuyahoga County, but clearly to have those people at the table and understand which is what I tried to point out in the data.

This is what drives your jail population.

I mean, crime and arrest, we have the lowest crime rate we have in America since the 1980s, and even with the recent uptick in some serious violent crime, most everybody in jail in America is not in there for murder, rape, and robbery.

These are not the, you know, it's the other more social economic issues that drive the jail, homelessness.

You can't get a PR bond if you don't have an address.

Well, homelessness is a crisis in America, there's no question about that.

So these are all things that in the best decision or the input to how to make those right, or how to do a different jail of the future will come in my opinion, from the health and human service providers who really understand the population that's ending up in our criminal justice system.

- So I think you mentioned this and you sent me some really great research on this as well, but you've done this sort of planning work in many cities and counties across the country.

And you mentioned some really good examples of other places that have been able to enact reform, have been able to build smaller jail facilities.

And I'm hoping that you can share a little bit, maybe a little inspiration today of what Cuyahoga County could learn from those places.

You know, we know every place is different, and every process will be different, but could you, what do you think we could learn from a place?

I think you mentioned in like Charlotte, Mecklenburg has done a lot of work on this.

- Well, there's all kinds of examples throughout the country of people that have an active reform, well, that's reduced the jail population, but just to give an example of Mecklenburg County, they were faced with a construction of an additional 1,000 jail beds back in the 2010 or 2011, they have main downtown jail, they had a jail north facility at a population of about 2,800 inmates.

And they came together as a county and a group to say, we aren't going to spend this money on expanding.

We're not going to build this new addition to the jail.

And they formed a criminal justice agency within county government, a small agency of, I think, three or four people.

Because first of all, it's very hard to bring about change when you've got again, county and city and agencies that are all separate units, but have to come together for a unified vision of the future, and that's what they worked very hard on.

And then they were able to get about $3.3 million from the MacArthur foundation, from their safety and challenge grants, to look at data informed decision-making, effective programming.

If it's not effective, let's not do that anymore.

And so they have now have about 1500 empty jail beds, which is kinda my cautionary tale.

When I was making presentations.

When you're embarking on this new jail, the last thing I'm sure you want to have for the amount of money you're gonna spend besides the loss of human capital is the capital is that you're going to have all these empty beds when you do realize and get smart about criminal justice reform, because we've seen examples throughout the country.

So they came together and the biggest word there was collaboration.

Everybody has to come to the table, everyone's got a different role to play, but if you have a unified vision that, yes, we know a jail will be part of our criminal justice system, but it will be for these serious violent offenders that pose a public safety risk.

And we will deal with our other factors of the jail, which is the majority of people in jail, which are social welfare and economic issues we'll have better outcomes.

Our community will be safer.

The concept of our community is safer because we build a bigger jail has been debunked by every major research organization in the country.

You're going to be safer if all those risk factors that lead someone in the justice system, you begin to address that, which is a big undertaking, but it can't happen with just one part of the justice system moving forward, it needs to be collaboration.

And it has to have input, like you said, Rachel, from many of the organizations, great organizations you have in this county that are dealing with these problems every day.

- So you had quite a few really concrete examples of changes that could help reduce our jail population here, going forward.

Like you said, most of them would require collaboration and consensus that are very hard to come by sometimes.

And if from people in different parts of the system, but it would be great if you could talk about a few of those concrete things that seem like the most promising, that would really help us, you know, over time reduce that jail population.

And that often kind of struck me that they weren't things that felt like they were that hard to do if everybody was on the same page.

- Well, the first thing is definitely an information system.

I mean, I am a person that believes in data to inform decision making and having data and factual information because in my 37 years of consulting, I've started a project and been told everything about what's driving the jail population and everything they say it is absolutely not factually true.

You know, like if I'm conducting interviews, so having good data, that's timely that doesn't take, you know, four weeks to pull out just who's in the jail today, for what reason, for how long that's really important.

So first of all, having a good integrated database and to bring to the table when you're doing collaboration to say, we all have to deal with the same set of facts here, let's all be on board about what the real facts are.

The second thing would be to have somebody in your jail or someone within the system whose only job it is to look every single day at who's in jail, for what reason, and what do we need to do to push this forward and get this person out of this jail, jail expediter or whatever you want to call it that's a very important thing.

Also having a uniform bond schedule.

So you don't have all the judges, 'cause the system setting bond one judge will set it for this or the other, you know, that having a uniform bond and also validate a risk assessment to make the determination that, okay, somebody has been arrested, they've done something.

Do they have to sit in the jail before they make their appearance in court?

And again, you've got a great example here because the City of Cleveland implemented that and had had a major reduction in the city of Cleveland's portion of the jail population.

And it enhanced the appearance rate at court.

People were out, they were supervised, they did go to court.

And so that saved a lot of jail days.

There it's a smaller portion city of Cleveland compared to the county, but do you have a concrete example right here.

Certainly bail reform.

This is an issue throughout the country.

We are a democracy to be sitting in jail because you don't have money, just doesn't seem to, it's not right.

And there's many ways and places that have eliminated cash bail have not had an increase in crime arrests.

It can be done.

There's examples of that.

So those are just a few, oh, another big one, mental health diversion.

We talked about having a centralized booking where when people are coming to the jail immediately, not a month later, when you find out someone's in the jail, that's pregnant and needs some particular services or somebody has mental illness issues to have that screening going on the minute somebody comes through the jail.

And if you can tie them back to a community agency, or you can supervise them at community to the parent court to having that central booking function, which the county is moving forward on a temporary basis until the new jail is built.

So that's a good thing.

And also what the county is moving forward on is a mental health diversion center because mental health, the crisis of mental health in our country is so prevalent in the criminal justice system.

That it's really important that people with mental illness are diverted.

A facility has recently opened.

It's not being fully utilized.

And that's one of the issues that I think that from the two and a half years since I left the study process, hopefully that mental health diversion center will be, cause it only opened, I think about a month ago.

I can't remember what it's about.

- It's been for a couple of months.

I think that's one of the things that is kind of confounding to folks is that, you know, we have taken a lot of steps here in this county to open such a place and yet, you know, I've been watching closely in the Cleveland Documenters notes because they're going to all the meetings about this and they keep hearing, oh, there's only four people there.

There's only three people there, there's only one or two people there a day.

And one thing that's kind of hard to grapple with, and maybe you probably don't have an answer to this.

But the fact that when I looked at your data, you were able to identify a significant percentage of people in the jail who had a diagnosed mental health issue.

But then when the center opens, nobody is there with a diagnosed mental health issue.

And so it's kind of hard to figure out why that's happening, Is it a systems problem?

Did we miss calculate something?

- No.

I mean, this will be the issue of collaboration and making sure that when you do develop an alternative program or you look at a diversion program and I say diversion, by the way, I mean, diversion should be happening at all points.

From the criminal justice system from the point of arrest, diversion from arrest, from the point of prosecution of their programs.

But certainly when you come into the jail, if there's ways to do diversion and mental health is the biggest issue.

So I haven't really gotten into the data about why it's not being used or the operational issues, but certainly to this forum, I would say you do have a mental health diversion program now for the jail.

I mean, there's also mental health services needed outside of the jail, but this is for the jail population and it needs to be utilized because there are people suffering in the worst environment that could possibly be in as your current jail.

I mean jail period because it exacerbates all the issues, but particularly the jail that you have here in the county right now.

And so that needs to be people at the table saying, we've developed this, we have a facility, let's figure out a way, what are the stumbling blocks, who's who doesn't want to be to utilize this?

And what way do to get people into this facility that you have already created a mental health diversion?

And there's many examples of this throughout the United States diversion centers.

Because again, it's not unique to Cuyahoga County that the socioeconomic and especially specifically mental health and substance abuse have a large role to play in the population in the jail.

- Speaking of stumbling blocks, I was really interested in the information you had on what we call technical violations.

You know, I had been talking to some folks who have been incarcerated in the jail and they were telling me that they called that ghost time.

So if you have a KPS out, you know, and they bring you into the jail and you don't know how long you're going to sit there before you get to come before a judge and then figure out what happens for that.

And I'm really curious, like, it seemed like a place where there could be some fixes that could happen.

And I was trying to figure out what are the stumbling blocks to not having, I think when you did your report at the time was like 8% of the population was there for technical violations.

- Yeah, 8 or 10%.

But I always look at that as one of my key components in the jail to say, I want to know who's in there for technical violation of probation or parole, because that means they have a committed a new offense, but they've had some non-compliant behavior, but having them come back to the jail and sit in the jail.

And even if that's even that's 200 beds of someone that, you know, it's better to have supervision in the community, you know, a graduated sanctions to say that we can't just, and I'm sure from a judicial standpoint, you can't have someone just, you know, say I'm not going to comply with what I'm supposed to do, but there are more effective ways to deal with that.

And putting people back in the jail when they have not committed a new offense or the process, I also look very closely at who's in jail, just on a warrant, meaning they didn't appear in court failure to appear as an automatic bench warrant.

And if you're driving around and you can through automation, see that there's a bench warrant, they'll be booked into the jail.

But if what they committed the offense that they didn't go to court for was a low-level first time shoplifting or whatever it might be.

Those are the kinds of things you need to look at to say, every single step of it are there more effective ways and this is a good use of our money.

I mean, again, is this making our community safer?

And I would say the more people that you put in jail and the longer you keep them, it's not making your community safer.

It's not at all making your community safer.

It's just ensuring that those people will have more, you know, suffering, homelessness, they've lost their job, any of those protective factors.

So you can have supervision or other ways to deal with non-compliant behavior, as opposed to putting, I've worked in jurisdictions where as much as 25% of the population in the jail is in the jail for non-compliant, you know, technical violation of community supervision, parole, probation, whatever it is.

And I always drill in on that to say, okay, especially here you have a choice, you can build a jail for the future, cause you do need a new jail and it could be this big, or it could be this big.

And these are the things that I try to drill on and inform this jurisdiction.

And I don't think that it would be easy to make the change, but there's plenty of examples throughout this country where people have decided to do that at a greatly improved, you know, less cost to the county, but also less collateral damage to human beings because, you know, you get them back.

And one thing you mentioned, Rachel, which is the whole issue of, is it a moneymaker, a jail is not a moneymaker and it shouldn't be.

And I am not a fan of privatization.

I never have been because if you think about, you know, if we have decided as a society that we will incarcerate some people, whether a jail or prison, I don't believe it should be turned over for profit.

And there is no profit because again, what we're dealing with and the right kind of services with well-trained staff in the mental health service, it costs money.

So I don't see anything of that being a moneymaker.

- So we're here now having this conversation because timing is important.

There's a lot of decisions kind of on the horizon and kind of quickly, you know, in a story for cleveland.com and September Courtney Astolfi a reporter there wrote about how officials are kind of still haggling over the size of the jail, kind of back and forth.

Some folks are advocating for fewer than 1600 beds in this jail, others for 2000 or more or extra space, just in case we need it.

There seems to be some anxiety that we would might need this in the future.

I feel like both of those options are really bigger, you know, and not smaller than what some of the numbers that you showed we could achieve.

And just to kind of give everybody the numbers, if you don't have them in a ballpark way for each 25 beds that we add to this number, you know, the cost is let's see here, 6 million in construction costs, $1.1 million a year in operating costs.

So we've talked a lot about human factors, but also just a lot of money, a lot of taxpayer money going into this.

So with all of that said, you know, that debate that's kind of going on.

Why do you think that officials here in Cuyahoga County haven't really jumped at the chance to just leaned into building a smaller jail, especially given this demonstrated like taxpayer costs, human costs, particularly to our black community, which is going to bear the highest cost of having a bigger jail?

- Well, I think it just goes back to that, you know, needing to have a unified vision for the future.

I don't think there's that, you know, certainly our people at that table is part of the process that I was conducting two and a half years, but it's only gonna happen if there is a unified vision that this is our jail of the future.

These are the beds that we need to really keep our community safe, but it's not the size.

And first of all, even a 1600 bed jail is well below.

When I started this process, there was 2,400 people in the jail.

And so to try to even achieve that, you know, could it be lower, but the problem with right now, and I think why there's been hesitancy is that many of the things that need to happen here haven't happened yet.

And so some people are basically saying, well, we better just be careful and be safe, but the story there is that very rarely do I see, unless it's areas like Mecklenburg County, where they're going to shut down a whole jail.

If a jail is built and it's bigger and it's got 2,400 beds, it's likely that people will, they will take the foot off the gas pedal to say, well, let's just keep doing what we're doing because you kind of out of sight out of mind, or so it's really important to have that unified vision and the collaboration to be monitoring the reforms that are going to happen as soon as central booking opens to maximize use of the diversion center, to have the county adopt countywide, the same kind of thing that the city of Cleveland is doing on comprehensive pre-trial screening, bail reform, which the Ohio Supreme Court has laid out, what needs to happen in terms of, and we have examples of that across the country.

They haven't all happened yet but with good intention and a unified vision and collaboration, they can, those things can happen.

And also just to remind, in terms of looking at even the lower considered the lower end 1,600 beds, you know, you have to have additional beds in a jail population or any jail to be able to separate males or females, or to have, opposing gang members in certain different housing units.

So when you talk about a 1600 bed jail that's would be a population of about 1300 inmates in a day.

And I believe, yes, it could probably even go lower than that.

But to me, that lower number, which there's also been evidence here because during COVID and throughout the country, I said, one of the positive things about COVID is we had to start right-sizing our correctional population because of the obvious issues about, you know, close proximity and mask wearing and washing hands that are very difficult to maintain when everybody, you know, two or three people in a cell or whatever.

In this county, you brought the population down below a thousand inmates a day.

And I would say that I don't believe that anybody sheriff or judges were letting murder, rape robbery out of the jail, but you went from basically a 2,400 bed jail when I started to a thousand, but now it's starting to creep back up.

And so the great collaboration that happened with prosecution and judges to bring that, to decide we got to get this population down because we've got a COVID crisis.

Those very things that were implemented needed to continue and then expand to be able to keep the population down.

- So you don't think that what folks are saying now is violent crime is up so much, that's why the population is back up.

You think that's not a good kind of longterm argument to- - Well, throughout many parts of the country.

I've just done extensive research on, I try to keep ahead of crime data.

And there are many jurisdictions including this one that had experienced a increase in violent crime.

As you can imagine, many of that, going back to the socioeconomic factors, people have lost jobs, domestic violence has gone up, crimes in many, particularly gun violence.

Of course, we live in a country that has more guns than people.

You know, there has been recently in many jurisdictions, and including Cleveland, an increase of crime as a result of COVID.

But again, the jail population was never made up and it isn't made up in any city, thankfully of everybody who's in jail has committed murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault.

So looking at why that crime rate has gone up, it's still going to tie back to the very factors, those socioeconomic factors in your community, that you can decide, we're going to focus on this and make our community safer and look at gun violence and look at the issues of, because any community that has a higher crime rate, which Cleveland does, the factors that lead to that are the very social, you know, drug addiction, homelessness, low employment, family members have been incarcerate.

You know, all those kinds of things will lead to a, have led to an increase in violence in some jurisdictions as a result of COVID because all those factors have been really highlighted and made worse.

- So today at the City Club, we're here with Karen Chinn discussing criminal justice reform and the proposed new construction of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center.

I'm Rachel Dissell with Cleveland Documenters.

We're about to begin the audience Q&A.

We welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, students, or those of you joining us via our live stream or the radio broadcast on 90.3 Ideasstream Public Media.

If you'd like to tweet a question, please tweet it to @thecityclub, you can also text 330 541 5794 that's 330 541 5794 And the staff here will try to work you into the program.

So I'm going to kind of finish off with a final question or so while people get their questions ready.

So in everything that we were talking about, we're kind of circling around this big question of why, of why we haven't taken a bigger leap towards reform.

I'm kind of a cynical reporter.

(laughs) I wonder if some of this, the system or the machine sustaining itself, or is there something else that's holding us back?

Is there something else that's preventing us from doing something transformational and not just building another set of buildings that we're going to fill with folks from our community?

Is there something that's stopping us from having a unified vision for justice here?

If you have some idea what that might be, please tell us.

But I guess my other question is, is it too late to change?

- No, I don't think it's too late to change at all.

I mean, I think that I've seen that can happen.

And so I do not believe that it's too late.

The why, each jurisdiction is different.

The priority of saying, for example, I gave Mecklenburg County, they said, we're not spending that money.

In many jurisdictions where now the jail budget is stripping out public education, other needed health and human services, other more important factors.

That will be a time when, again, financially, when people will say we have a better way to spend this money.

And by the way, it will be an astronomical sum of money to build this kind of facility.

So I think it just boils down to, again, where I've seen that it's working is that everyone, the public pressure, pressure within the system, because it it's really, it's not an easy thing.

Again, everybody's got a different role to play.

Everybody kind of sees here's what we're doing.

We don't need to be told we're doing wrong, or we don't maybe want to do it differently.

But the only way that change can happen is if everybody does sit at the table, you can't just have... And as we know throughout the country, there's some amazingly progressive prosecutors that are trying to make changes.

In California, two of them are getting recalled because they don't want to follow, you know, citizens are now too worried that everyone's gonna be out in the street committing more crime, some judges that try to make change, if everyone comes together and there's a unified vision, when that things start happening to say, well, I'm not sure we want to do this.

If you're all together on say, no, this is the way we're going.

And we know why, and it's based on data and factual information and what does work and what doesn't, and what's effective, then I think it can happen.

And I don't think it's too late in Cuyahoga County.

- Thank you so much.

I have two questions.

First of all, what happened to your report?

Was it presented to the Cuyahoga County Council, have they seen it, judges, has it been reported in the news so that citizens will know what you have recommended and your findings?

Second question is, would you say something about the CAHOOTS Program or others that are similar from Eugene, Oregon that have crisis, community-based crisis mental health intervention?

That one has been going about 30 years, they've saved a huge amount of money and kept people out of jail.

Thank you.

- The first one, all of the forums and the material that was presented as part of my assessment was presented in a public forum.

I don't know it was recorded.

And then, so that, I don't know if everybody here has heard about, but it certainly would be public information in terms of the presentations that were made to oversight committee on the state.

There was 12 elected officials, prosecutors, judges that were at the table as we develop this assessment and developed a plan for a future justice center.

So that public is public information.

The second point that you bring up is that there's a lot of really good programs around the country.

That, again, not just jail diversion, but from the point and the on the street crisis intervention with law enforcement, because they're the first ones that really come in contact when someone's having a mental health crisis or a psychotic episode or whatever.

And instead of criminalizing that, but to call the right people that are mental health professionals to the scene to make a better decision than we're just taking this person to jail 'cause they're walking around and talking crazy, it looks scary, we'll take them to the jail.

There's a lot of programs that have been developed like that throughout the country and they are excellent programs.

The one you mentioned, but there's also many others.

And so training the first responders, law enforcement and not just trading them, but having a separate group of people that understand and can assess the mental health issues particularly and call those people in when needed is something that we have to do.

Because again, diversion at every point of the criminal justice system where it's appropriate.

- By the way, I have a copy of that report.

I learned so much from it.

And I think just because of during the pandemic, it didn't get as many eyeballs on it as much attention as it needed.

So I will be happy to share it out for my Twitter account, for those that want to read it.

And the City Club will also share it out in a way so that more people can see what was in the original report.

- Thank you for being here.

In 2018, Rachel wrote an excellent article on the inhumane conditions at the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center.

I appreciate Karen's remarks.

These are humans in these in these buildings and it seems that people don't think they are.

So my question to you is how can we include treating inmates or defendants as humans as a part of the campaign for this new justice center?

- Well, one thing that I said, when I did my first presentations, I said, could I just ask this question?

Could I ask everyone in the audience, please raise your hand if you know someone, your own child, your neighbor's child, your nephew, your sister, whatever that has not had some issue or ever been in jail to bring it down to a scale that these aren't other people, these are our neighbors.

These are our children, certainly disproportionate from minority communities and which has had a major impact on, you know, family issues and other, it just ripples off from there.

But I don't know how we can make people think, I would say that probably in every aspect, even in the justice system, somebody judges, prosecutors, they probably also have a neighbor or a nephew, a kid, someone they know that's been involved and has been in the jail.

So, I mean, I know in my family there's been some issues.

And so we have to realize and recognize that these are human beings that need, especially in the jail, because they haven't been found guilty of anything yet that need to be humanely and there will be better outcomes for that.

And our society will be safer for that, to find out what the issues are and then to get the treatment that's really needed.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for coming today.

Previous...

Yes, leading in kind of to her remarks, I was wondering if you could cite one of the very best examples of a jail around the country somewhere that has what you would deem most excellent program.

And if so, I always think imitation can work pretty well.

So where could some of our city leaders that are going to be involved in this visit or have the, it's hard to know.

- Well, that's interesting.

We had a whole tour schedule outlined as part of the process for this, and then COVID happened.

So one place that we were going to be taking people to take a look at was we did some virtual meetings just as an example, was Harris County, Texas, where they have a very comprehensive booking, a pre-trial booking center, where the whole point is to get people in and out of there as quickly as possible.

Don't dress them out if they can bond out if they bail or whatever time to have a community program.

So that was one that we were in looking at.

We were also, I think Jeff was the other place?

Miami, I think we were going to go down Texas.

And I'm trying to remember the other one that we kind of identified that were most similar.

What was the other one?

- [Jeff] It was a certain county in Texas (Jeff speaking faintly) - Oh, okay, Mecklenburg County, I would say would be another one.

I mean, again, they've had help from the MacArthur Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation will not go into a jurisdiction that doesn't have that unified vision where they see there's really a need for change, but they completely turned that around in terms of, again, that they've now looking at 1500 empty jail beds, their jail, the main jail is not exactly the environment that I would say is excellent.

That kind of jail, there's one that I planned recently in Lancaster County, which is in Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska.

It has basically a mental health ward because we know that now jails really are the largest, you know, many mental health population in them.

So to develop some specialized housing, specialized housing for women.

So there are some examples from across the country, but it's not as if, you know, certainly read a place like Rikers Island, which New York has had major criminal justice reform, but they also have an absolutely horrible jail that they're trying to downsize and move out into the communities.

So there are still a lot of jails, maybe not as bad as what I've seen here that do also need to get on board with what we've learned is effective.

And also we've learned also from international community what's a more humane way of dealing with people when they were incarcerated.

- Just to go back to what I was asking you before the program, you said you learned from the international communities, what specifically, and also in terms of our jail, do you think we have to make special provisions for immigrants non-English speakers?

- Oh, absolutely.

I mean, that's one of the stumbling blocks.

If you don't have interpreters or you send out notice to appear for court or texted out and someone doesn't speak English.

So the whole issue of making sure you're getting information out to people that, and having interpreters or providing information for a court appearance, that's in that language.

What I'm talking about more, just my own personal research, for example, there's a Halden Prison in Norway, Norway has the lowest recidivism rate in the world that when they do have to incarcerate someone, they basically live in apartments.

They farm they garden, they make their own food, they learn a job skill and they are not coming back.

So we don't have, for example, in California, where within two years of release of the California prisons, 70% are back in the prison because they haven't, they're still homeless, they're still drug addicted, that other issues.

So the human way of dealing with that, dealing with mental health in a much more humanistic way.

And I find that many of the Scandinavian countries, I believe are doing a much better job of that.

And that also, I believe has to do with some of their opinions just about social welfare.

And, you know, healthcare is a right, it's not a privilege.

Education is, you know, they're already that sort of thinking to say, we are all a community and we all will be safer and better together.

And so even if someone is involved in the law enforcement or the criminal justice system, it's a more humane way of dealing with them and they get people then out, it's not the repeat cycle that we have.

And so many of your people in jail.

And I always try to do a study on this, what percent, how many bodies actually account for admissions.

And what you will find is that there's a lot of certain number of bodies that are counting for the majority, because it's a revolving door nothing's being fixed, nothing's being taken care of.

So in places where they are trying to deal with that and get people out of the justice system, it's much more effective.

- Thank you for appearing.

I have basically two questions.

First deals with who was going to run the computer system.

Everyone in here will admit that the county executive and the county council have done well.

I shall not say the word, but a certain type of job.

First, being a small government person, would you favor this being run and administered by the court system, the county court system.

Second, have you looked at including city of Cleveland in the various municipal courts to set up a local agency to get everybody in there and have the courts run by a maybe five county judges, three city judges and maybe half a dozen judges from various municipal courts on a district area.

Thank you.

- I'm not sure I can give an answer on who should run it, but I can say this when it's developed, everybody has to be at the table to talk about what information is needed, who has access to it.

One of the systems that I found that was most effective is the prosecutor's office here does have a really good, I believe data system, that data dashboard, which I was able to access some data I didn't find out about until later in the study, but everybody's keeping a little bit of their own data.

And one of the biggest issues is that the data needs to be timely, comprehensive, and integrated.

And so developing those systems and what what reports the judge would need, what reports the prosecutor needs, public defender, all aspects of pretrial services, the city and the county have to come together to talk about that, to develop a comprehensive criminal justice information system.

There's no question about that.

Who should run it in the example of Mecklenburg County, when they develop their criminal justice agency, which is separate from the court, from the prosecutor public defender, that management information system and the reports, which you can go online and find amazing reports, timely reports.

I was able to find out immediately yesterday, what's their current population just going online.

That is a separate agency that they formed to be the main coordination agency for criminal justice reform.

- Making me jealous with all this talk about data.

I think there's a lot of us that have hope that in this next year we'll make a major leap forward so that some of that information can be made available.

Do you think that an agency like the one that you talked about needs to be a little bit independent?

- Yeah, I mean, again, I'm not here to say, where they should be, but I'm here to say, you need to have a comprehensive, integrated criminal justice information system, but there's a benefit of saying instilling trust where there's a new organization or a sub part of another agency that is the leader of that.

But everybody has to contribute to it.

Everybody has to say, I will provide the data, what data is needed, what do I need to know on a timely basis?

What are issues of confidentiality?

All those things have to be ironed out.

- You've mentioned that a successful reform efforts need to have citizens at the table, need to have the community engaged in the process.

What can we regular folks do to make this successful in Cuyahoga County?

I think there's a great deal of interest, but maybe it hasn't all been activated.

What have you seen work well in other communities.

- Basically that there's been involvement of the, again, the agencies and the citizens that know what's really going on in the jail factual information that everybody in jail has not, again, committed murder, rape robbery.

So to have substance abuse organizations that deal with clients that are intersect with the criminal justice system.

And you did have a really good thing.

I don't know if it's still going on, but a couple of years ago, an intercept mapping process where people from the community come together and look at the touch points within a criminal justice system, from the point of, you know, community organizations, health and human service providers, and to really document that what, what overlap there is among those agencies within the criminal justice system.

And then to begin to have forums like this, to say, I mean, everybody in this room, I assume as a taxpayer in Cuyahoga County, and you'll all be faced with saying, can we do something different not only the financial savings, but also human savings.

And so I believe that reporting special stories we know from last summer with many of the protests throughout the country, that it takes to finally put this issue front and forward to say, there has to be reform.

This is not the way that we should be moving into the future in terms of fairness in the justice system, understanding what's driving the system and especially in a county, that's faced directly with building a new jail.

So, I mean, I think it's public awareness as the main thing and getting the voices from people that really understand what's going on.

- Have you seen anywhere that you've worked, where the voices of people with lived experience, having been in a jail have been included in a planning process.

Is there a way to do that?

And if that will be really useful and helpful?

- Well, there are, there have been people that, you know, over the years, you can even read about a newspaper even if I haven't worked there that have had a bad experience of their child was worked many years ago in Maricopa County, which was, I mean, under Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the toughest sheriff in America.

And there was young people that had been booked in and stunned gun, they had many deaths in the jail.

And so certainly the ACLU and other organizations bring this stuff to light and get people behind it to say, we can't have this happening in these jails.

And it takes again, public awareness and information to say.

And so I have seen some times throughout the country that where I've worked, but also where I haven't worked that having that voice, you know, my child was arrested and here's exactly what happened.

My child died in the jail of a drug overdose, I lost a baby in the jail because I had a miscarriage, those kinds of individual stories.

But I find that those are really we'll take press inform... You know, reporting of that, and in a community that cares about coalescing about making that different in the future.

- But has anybody made that actually a part of their planning process to make sure that those voices of folks with lived experience are included when decisions are being made?

- Well, I feel like here in Cuyahoga County that my interviewing 65 agencies, you know, everything from frontline services to re-entry job.

I mean, as best I could, as I think I mentioned when I first came into it, the assessment two years earlier with more of a building assessment, I had one page that said, you need a 3000 bed jail.

I was like, what was the input, what's the data?

I don't see any of this.

I feel like the reason that I would sit, making a suggestion for a smaller jail of the future is I did put those voices on the table.

I did say, this is what's driving your crime rate is not what drives your jail population, your arrest.

You know what I mean, but nationally arrests are down.

That's not what's driving the jail population.

This is what we have to focus on as a society, drug addiction, homelessness, lack of employment, all those things that make our community, that that's what we have to focus on.

And I tried to bring that to the table and I always do try.

Sometimes I've even been hired they say, we're here to plant a jail.

Why are you doing interviews with human service?

Because you have to look at the whole system.

(audience clapping) - Today at the City Club, we've been listening to a forum with Karen Chinn.

One of the consultants who completed an assessment of Cuyahoga County's criminal justice system.

The forum was moderated by Rachel Dissell, Accountability Mentor for Cleveland Documenters.

Today's forum is The Lozick Law Enforcement Forum, as well as the final forum of 2021 in our Criminal Justice series in partnership with Char and Chuck Fowler, the Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation.

We welcome guests at tables hosted by Thompson Hein and other sponsors.

We're happy to have all of you here.

We will be taking a short break for the holidays next week, but be sure to join us when we return on Friday, December 3rd.

We will be talking about three years of Say Yes Cleveland.

We will hear the latest updates from Say Yes Cleveland, Executive Director, Diane Downing, followed by a panel with Say Yes Cleveland Family Support Specialists, Lekisha Rogers, and the first student to earn a bachelor's degree with a Say Yes Cleveland scholarship, Leean Andino.

Tickets are still available for this forum and you can purchase them and learn more about our other forums at cityclub.org.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you, Karen Chinn and Rachel Dissell.

And thank you, members and friends of the City Club.

I'm Robin Minter Smyers.

And this forum is now adjourned.

(audience clapping) (bell dings) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(dramatic music) - Production and distribution of City Club forums and Idea stream Public Media are made possible by PNC.