Officials In These 11 Counties (Ferguson Is In One) Are About To Be Held Accountable


The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced Wednesday that 11 U.S. jail systems will be allocated millions to improve conditions and reduce inmate populations.

Each jail will receive between $1.5 and $3.5 million from the two-year grant. Jails in large cities like New York will benefit, as well as those in smaller areas like Charleston County, South Carolina.

Other counties that will be receiving the funding:

  • Pima County, Arizona, which includes Tucson
  • Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston
  • Connecticut, where all jails are run by the state
  • Philadelphia
  • New Orleans
  • Lucas County, Ohio, which includes Toledo
  • Milwaukee County, Wisconsin
  • Spokane County, Washington
  • St. Louis County, Missouri

Laurie Garduque, the head of the Chicago-based charity group behind the initiative, said the funds are aimed to upend the way jails function nationwide, and reduce unnecessary incarceration:

“The foundation’s goal is to change the way the nation thinks about and uses jails. The whole idea of the initiative is to model best practices, have models of reform, so that other jurisdictions can implement them on their own.”

Approximately 12 million people are admitted to the more than 3,000 jails in the country each year.

As opposed to state and federal prisons, local jails are largely comprised of people accused of a crime before they’ve had a trial, many of whom are there for nonviolent offenses because they can’t afford bail, and suffer from serious mental illnesses.

Nearly 200 jurisdictions in 45 states applied for the MacArthur funding last year after the foundation announced it planned to spend $75 million in an effort to make the system more fair.

Officials in St. Louis County, which includes Ferguson among its nearly 30 townships, hope to reduce the county’s 1,300-person lockup population by 20 percent over the next three years.

Their plans include simplifying county court websites so that the thousands of people who receive traffic tickets each year will know where and when to pay their fines, as well as focusing on pretrial releases for low-level offenders, like those violating probation, who otherwise stay in jail longer than others.

Beth Huebner of the University of Missouri-St. Louis who is working on the effort has said:

“Our goal is to focus on procedural justice … which is basically how justice is served. Who are we afraid of versus who are we mad at?”

And this:

“The big things are who goes in and how long they stay,” said Glazer, describing a problem that will require officials to examine everything from how it transports inmates to courthouses to what programs it can create for low-level offenders with serious drug problems.

Under the grant, officials are examining each part of the system, from how inmates are transported to what programs can be created for low-level offenders, in an effort to fix systemic issues from the root, rather than slap another band-aid on them.

Featured image: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images