Courts Gain $570,000 Grant For Criminal Justice Reform

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County is entering the final phase of a national program that has, for nearly a decade, funded reforms of local criminal justice systems.

The latest award for the Milwaukee County Circuit Court system was a $570,000 grant through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge which will fund projects from 2023 through 2025. Stephanie Garbo, the judicial operations manager for Milwaukee County, said this funding represents phase five of the challenge, and “the final phase that we know of.”

Specifically, this funding will cover a domestic violence program with The Alma Center, work by the Medical College of Wisconsin to integrate behavioral health data into law enforcement decision-making, and a contract with the Wisconsin Policy Forum for a project manager.

Milwaukee-area work on the Safety and Justice Challenge began in 2015, when strategies were developed for local criminal justice reform in collaboration with the Community Justice Council.

The strategies included:

• A book and release program for the Milwaukee Police Department intended to keep people arrested for non-violent, low-level misdemeanors out of the Milwaukee County Jail.
• An expansion of mental health crisis response, so that people could be directed toward treatment and not the jail.
• A diversion program that can provide mental health evaluation, and potentially diversion, after someone is booked but before the District Attorney’s office issues charges.
• The integration of trauma-informed practices into the adult criminal justice system.
• A study of people that are heavy users of the behavioral health system who also frequently come into contact with law enforcement and the criminal justice system.
• And the dissemination of behavioral health data to law enforcement and the courts in order to reduce repeated jailing of individuals who need mental health treatment.

Since 2016, the county has received more than $6 million to implement these strategies. The bulk of the funding in this latest grant will go toward the Alma Center’s work on a Domestic Violence Deferred Prosecution program, which costs more than $100,000 a year. This program was developed during an early phase of the Safety and Justice Challenge. Under deferred prosecution, the district attorney files charges but holds off on prosecuting them while an individual completes a program. The Alma Center provides case management and treatment for individuals sent through the program.

The Alma Center primarily works with men who have been involved with, or are at risk of getting caught in the criminal justice system. It runs a program called Men Ending Violence that seeks to disrupt the cycle of domestic violence by helping men understand the root causes of their violence and helping them develop respectful behavior and attitudes. The Alma Center reports that the program has reduced incidences of re-offense by its participants by 87%.

A major focus of this final phase of the grant program is “memorializing” the strategies implemented over the past six years.