A joint effort between Center for Policing Equity and Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School is calling for a new conversation concerning police reform in America. Today the organizations released a five-step policy action plan titled “Re-imagining Public Safety: Prevent Harm and Lead with Truth” that focuses on advancing policing through strategies backed by science and experience. The release comes ahead of the 2020 presidential election to bring ideas and educate the national criminal justice dialogue in the United States.
“It’s time we told the truth about criminal justice reform. The system is massive, complex, and often doesn’t align with the values of officers or community members,” said Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff, Co-founder and CEO of Center for Policing Equity and one of the authors of the plan. “To fix the system, we’re going to need bold ideas that have the best chance of causing collateral good.
The plan outlines five key steps that the authors say should lead the charge towards re-imagining public safety. They include:
Law enforcement setting a new standard that focuses on building public trust
Federal Government facilitating the culture change by incentivizing procedural justice programs
Law enforcement agencies measuring and managing police behavior through data
Law enforcement and communities coming together to reconcile past harms
Creation of a National Review Board framework to address negative policing events
“We must move the conversation concerning police reform away from worn out crime control strategies (including implementing better or more humane ways to carry out the older vision) and instead invest in building trust and legitimacy in the system as a whole,” said Tracey L. Meares, Professor at Yale Law School, Founding Director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale, and plan author.
In addition to the five recommendations, the plan also references several documents to which authors have contributed collectively to for reference on best practices. They are available, along with the policy plan, at policingequity.org.