After attending a phenomenal Vera Institute symposium, I began asking myself: how can voters, researchers, and practitioners change the broken justice system? The answer is education. The system is terrible with data — it outright measures and incentivizes the wrong things, and it ignores evidence in lieu of politics. America can and should do better. The CSG Justice Center has a resource that shows exactly how prosecutors can start.
Organization — CSG Justice Center
CSG Justice Center
The justice policy arm of The Council of State Governments — a nonpartisan organization providing research and technical assistance to state government across all three branches. The CSG Justice Center works directly with prosecutors, corrections agencies, and legislators on evidence-based reform.
Resource — Changing the Narrative
The Prosecutor’s Role in Fostering Connections to Community-Based Care
A practical resource explaining how prosecutors can use their substantial discretionary power to connect people with community-based services — including guidance on building community partnerships and implementing diversion efforts locally.
Three Questions Worth Sitting With
On Power
Prosecutors are often known for making “examples” of people. But what if they themselves started setting a better example — not as a rhetorical question, but as an actual professional standard?
On Role
What if prosecutors acknowledged the roles they should be playing and began building rather than harming members of their communities? The power is already there. The choice is in how it gets used.
On Resources
There are plenty of good people out there capable of reform and restoration to their communities. Maybe they just need the resources to make it happen. That is a more hopeful read — and the CSG brief is exactly that kind of resource.
What the CSG Resource Provides
The CSG brief addresses prosecutors specifically because prosecutors hold unique discretionary leverage that most other justice system actors do not. A prosecutor can choose to divert, to connect, to build a community partnership with a behavioral health provider, to measure outcomes by something other than conviction counts. The brief walks through the practical steps for doing that — not aspirationally, but operationally. Community partnerships, referral pipelines, diversion program design. It is a how-to, not a sermon.
From Rita
I very much believe there are plenty of good people out there capable of reform and restoration to their communities. Maybe they just need the resources to make it happen.
Related Coverage — Prosecutorial Reform and the Evidence for Change
How to cite: Williams, R. [Rita]. (2024, December 16). CSG Justice Center: Prosecutors Can Lead the Way to Community-Based Care. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2024/12/16/csg-justice-center-the-prosecutors-role-in-fostering-connections-to-community-based-care/
