How to redesign the criminal justice system in America
This paper is designed to be a resource for local, state and federal jurisdictions as well as the private sector in planning, implementing and executing responsible transformation in policing, court systems and corrections.
Produced by:
The Jordan Turner Foundation
in conjunction with
Training Resource Services, Inc.
jordanturner.org
2025
Dedicated to Stanley Gibran Turner
Statement of need and purpose
This statement refers to transformation of the criminal justice system in America, not reform. Reform is a change model. Change is an outgrowth of the ideological ideas held by those effecting the change or the compromises agreed on by two or more groups with differing ideological perspectives. Reform also presupposes that an existing institution can be sufficiently corrected through change. Transformation, on the other hand, refers to the replacement of an existing institution with something entirely new, recognizing that the existing institution cannot be reformed sufficiently to meet the requirements of evolving needs and expectations.
In the case of the criminal justice system, the need for change has been recognized throughout American history and, in fact, meaningful change has occurred over time. Efforts to shift away from incarceration toward community based rehabilitative interventions, for example, is one of the more positive developments in recent history, but reforms, no matter how well conceived, will never solve the problem of an institution that cannot meet the needs and expectations of contemporary society. It should be noted that even with a focus on reducing incarceration in favor of more effective alternatives, incarceration has grown substantially in the United States over the past half century, in spite of the longstanding awareness that incarceration does not reduce crime or recidivism and does not enhance public safety. Incarceration, rather than being a sensible approach to crime, is actually an emotional response to victimization, a means of helping people feel that something is being done to make them safer. The continued expansion of the criminal justice system is also an outgrowth of partisan interests and territorial resolve. We spend billions on this system year after year with horrible outcomes. Self-interested politicians as well as public and private interests have convinced us that the criminal justice system is the one institution where failure should be rewarded, year after year, generation after generation. And by rewarding failure, the hubris and ineptitude continue to grow.
This paper explores the features of a criminal justice system in America that will eventually be fundamentally different from what we now have and assume to be immovable. What will replace current policing? How will we transition court structures into something almost entirely different? To what extent will jails, prisons, juvenile facilities, and community based interventions be eliminated or replaced with well thought out programs that truly meet the human needs of victims, families, communities and perpetrators? How will laws be rewritten to make transformation possible? Most of all, what will we expect of ourselves? We must recognize that our thought processes and attitudes require fundamental transformation. This will be an arduous yet essential and unavoidable process. How will we take the criminal justice system out of the realm of partisan politics and move it into the arena of the common good?
This leads us to what should be an obvious conclusion. Transformation of this magnitude cannot happen except through a revolution in the way we think about crime and justice. It can only happen because people choose to do the work of making themselves new, of seeing the world and their brothers and sisters in the human family as exactly that, members of a family. Transformation cannot be forced or pressured. It can only happen when enough people choose a different way of doing things because they come to realize that it is essential and critical if the world is to become a place of fairness and dignity for every single person on earth. This way of thinking and acting must be nurtured and modeled.
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This is how the criminal justice system will be transformed.
- We must learn to think differently
Though some may not want to entertain the notion of responsible behavioral choices as the underpinning of social and criminal justice transformation, we must accept the fact that individual and institutional transformation can only be achieved jointly. As the hearts and minds of the people are transformed, institutions will gradually follow. Society cannot maintain a high degree of stability unless the vast majority of people choose to obey the law. But society also faces instability when large numbers of people see institutions as unjust or ineffective. The criminal justice system is one of those institutions that has lost the support and trust of large swaths of the population.
Those who hold to more conservative views often see the criminal justice system as too lenient and soft on crime. They see crime as a product of individual choice, something that could be largely eliminated if people chose to obey the law. Those with more liberal views tend to argue that crime is often the result of inequality and social injustice. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Both are partially right and both are partially wrong.
As enough individual members of society gradually start to think in a fundamentally different way, the criminal justice system will start to be transformed. This process has, in fact, already begun, though the degree of change is sometimes hard to recognize because the system overall is still mired in the past. But as more people change, the pace of institutional and functional change will increase.
- We Must Trust the Future Over the Past.
It is excruciatingly difficult to break away from the way things have been done for generations, even centuries. In the case of the criminal justice system, it is hard to imagine something completely different from what we have always known. But an irrefutable fact is that the future always comes and the often frightening and painful realities experienced as the past transitions into the future are unavoidable. Of course, this does not mean that everything about the past is bad or that everything about the future is good. In the case of the criminal justice system, everyone longs for safety, security and peace of mind. These are perfectly legitimate desires. No one likes crime and fear, not even criminals. This is true whether one’s orientation is more rooted in the past or more focused on the future. The desire for peace and safety is universal and applies to every single member of the human family and is a source of complete unity. Where we diverge as human beings is on the question of how to achieve and maintain peace and safety. In this regard we will now start to examine some of the specifics of criminal justice transformation.
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JUSTICE
Justice refers to fundamental fairness for all people. Justice cannot exist in society when one group is able to achieve and maintain an unfair advantage over other members of the society. Justice cannot exist when a segment of society lacks a fair voice in determining their own destiny.
We must recognize that segments of American society face very different realities. The difference in the relationship to the criminal justice system for many non-white citizens is particularly acute. Rates of incarceration, for example, have grown dramatically since the 1970s. This has resulted in the building of more and more jails and prisons, more inmate beds, and sentencing practices designed to fill those beds. The twin of sentencing is revocation of probation and parole, thus returning large numbers of offenders to jails and prisons after release. The sad truth is that a disproportionate number of those beds are occupied by black inmates. Is this true because black people are more inclined to criminality or because society perpetuates such a notion?
According to the PEW Center of the States the prison population in the United States in 1972 was 174,379. By 2010, a mere 38 years later, that number had increased to 1,404,053. Why? Was it because crime increased by almost 1000% in less than four decades? Or was it because of the way our elected officials chose to respond to crime – in a way that vastly increased the number of arrests and the severity of prison sentences – based on the belief that the solution to our social problems was to lock up more and more people for longer periods, especially our fellow black and brown citizens. This approach to criminal justice in America is referred to in many different ways, but two of the more common justifications for what became known as ‘mass incarceration’ were the ‘broken window theory’ and the ‘war on drugs.’
The ‘Broken Window Theory’ used the analogy of a large warehouse with hundreds of windows. If one window is broken and not fixed immediately, pretty soon all the windows will be broken. If applied to the criminal justice system, all crime, no matter how minor, must be met with a swift and certain response from law enforcement and the courts. Offenders must know they will be caught and held to account, usually by being incarcerated. This, in theory, would deter these offenders from reoffending and would deter others from offending in the first place.
The ‘war on drugs’ likewise relied heavily on incarceration to deter drug dealing and drug use. The result, of course, was a massive increase in the number of people in jails and prisons on drug related offenses and other crimes. This “get tough” approach to crime was supposed to teach people a lesson, reduce recidivism and make our communities safer..
Like everything else, if anything in the United States goes to the extreme, black and brown people usually get the worst end of the stick.
So, it is easy to see why jails and prisons (public and private) were being built all over the place. The jail and prison building industry took off. I knew this was getting out of hand when I went back to my home town in 1995 and drove by the Dairy Queen where I had worked in high school. The Dairy Queen had been closed for years and was falling apart, but even worse, my junior high school behind the Dairy Queen had been converted into a massive new county jail. Ms. Conway’s classroom at the west end of the second floor, once teeming with dreamy eyed sixth graders, now housed prisoners, mostly drug related offenders. My own brother, one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known, spent time there during his years of drug abuse.
Justice in the United States can best be served by moving away from the system of incarceration for the vast majority of offenders and instead turning to community based alternatives with a major emphasis on diversion programs allowing offenders to avoid a criminal record. It is also critical that we end the fines, court costs, and other fees that create a massive burden for offenders and their families as they try to become drug free, law abiding citizens. We shoot ourselves in the foot as a society when we create conditions that virtually guarantee a pattern of reoffending and violation of court orders.
SOMETHING NEW
First it is important to acknowledge that responsibility and accountability starts with the individual member of society. Regardless of the injustices that have existed and continue to exist in American society, it is still the duty of every citizen to obey the law. It is also the responsibility of our institutions to give paramount consideration to the victims of crime.
With that said, these are the components of our criminal justice system that do not work and must be replaced.
POLICING AND THE COMMUNITY
Law enforcement, if done right, is an integral part of a safe and orderly society. This presents a tremendous challenge in the United States, the country with the most diverse population on earth, a population with vastly different historical and cultural experiences. These experiences define very different perspectives toward the criminal justice system, especially law enforcement, which is where contact with the system begins.
Citizens, regardless of their outlook and background, have every right to expect respectful interaction with police. At the same time, there must be a social understanding that individual citizens will respect the law and the concept of a civil society. Otherwise, safety and order break down. It must be a two way street, yet a street with a unified attitude toward safety and security, fueled by mutual respect. The fundamental understanding must be that the police are a part of the community and the community is engaged with the mission of policing. The police must be viewed as our neighbors, our church members, as the people we see in the grocery store and the people we interact with in the park while watching our children play. The community and the police cannot be viewed as us and them. It has to be us, period – a single entity. Respect for the police and respect for the community must go hand in hand. For this to be a reality, however, a lot of things have to change, so many things, in fact, that the police and the community will eventually become totally new.
First, we must radically change what we expect of police. This will define how we recruit, hire, train and promote law enforcement. A dramatic change in laws, policies and practices will be necessary. This is what policing in the future will look like:
- The police officer of the future will be a person who is committed to protecting and serving every member of the community fairly and respectfully.
- The police officer of the future will be a humble servant.
- The police officer will be committed to the good of every member of the community, especially the drug abuser, the homeless, the weak, the desperate. He/She will be an advocate for his fellow citizens.
- Police officers of the future will have at least a four year college degree, with an emphasis on community relations.
- The police officer of the future will be recruited and hired through a meticulous screening process designed to accept only those candidates who are mentally, emotionally and attitudinally suited to public service and compassion toward their fellow citizens. They will also be screened for any cultural or racial bias that might improperly influence their conduct.
- The police officer of the future will understand that force is to be used only as a last resort and only to protect everyone involved.
- The police officer of the future will employ deescalation at all times in his/her interaction with others.
- The police department of the future will employ specialty officers or units to provide expert intervention and assistance in the following focus areas:
- Investigation
- Arrest
- Community relations
- Event safety and security
- Drug abuse
- Homelessness
- Mental health needs
- Juvenile issues
- Violence de escalation
- Conflict resolution
- Domestic violence
- Child abuse & neglect
- Crisis management
- Family needs
- Food assistance
- Employment
- Emergency assistance
- Medical needs
- Child & elderly well-being
Without sounding too simplistic, the model of the police officer of the future should be “policeman Bob” from our elementary school reading book. He will be a friendly, caring presence in the neighborhood who is one element of a peaceful, harmonious, healthy, happy community. Police officers of the future will have the authority to handle many situations with information, encouragement, guidance and warnings, rather than arrests.
The system of policing, courts and corrections should be redesigned from top to bottom to prevent and avoid criminal records and incarceration. The system should be designed to promote stability and avoid disruption. Community based diversion with intervention, education and guidance free of criminal records and incarceration – will be defining features of the future criminal justice system. In fact, the criminal justice system should be renamed the “community peace system.” This makes perfect sense because police officers are actually peace officers anyway. So, college criminal justice programs would become community peace programs. Students of the future will earn a degree in community peace administration (CPA) rather than criminal justice administration (CJA).
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM = COMMUNITY PEACE SYSTEM
COURTS
Transformation of the American court system will require substantial legislative and statutory redesign. The goal of the courts should be to divert as many offenders as possible away from incarceration before and after disposition and to vastly reduce the number of people in jails and prisons. Additional objectives should be to protect victims, contribute to safe and stable families and communities, prevent financial burdens on offenders by eliminating or greatly reducing fines, court costs and fees. A further goal should be to prevent criminal records. Jails and prisons should be reserved for a very small number of offenders who should be removed from the community due to a demonstrated and repeated propensity for violent and very dangerous conduct.
The court system is basically organized as follows:
- Federal Courts
- District
- Appellate
- Supreme Court
- State Courts
- Misdemeanor Courts
- Superior, Criminal, Circuit Courts
- State Appeals Courts
- State Supreme Court
- Local Courts
- Juvenile Courts
- City or Municipal Courts
- Traffic Courts
- Specialty Courts
- Drug Courts
- Domestic Violence Courts
- Environmental Courts
- Veterans Courts
- Mental Health Courts
- Animal Protection Courts
The purpose of the courts has traditionally been to protect and promote justice and to punish. The protection of justice is a laudable mission. Punishment, however, serves no useful purpose for victims or the community. What does serve a useful purpose is meaningful intervention. This is where the courts can have a transformative impact in the lives of victims, offenders and the community as a whole.
DRUG OFFENDERS
Drug offenders are those who illegally possess or distribute drugs or both. The “war on drugs” in the United States dates to the early 1970s when drug dealing, drug use and drug abuse started to be treated as a criminal matter rather than a public health matter. Large scale and organized drug dealing should, of course, have been treated as a criminal matter. People involved in this activity are among those who should occupy our prisons. These are people who seek to destroy families solely for money. Many of them will kill anyone who gets in their way. But the vast majority of people involved with illegal drug use are people who need appropriate interventions, commonly referred to as treatment. Incarceration is not a meaningful intervention for the vast majority of drug users. Criminal records, fines, costs and fees, combined with drug use and abuse, are a toxic mix and only serve to enhance the destructive impact of drugs in our communities. Drug possession and abuse, by and large, should be deferred by the courts into intervention programs with a plan determined by a carefully designed risk and needs assessment. The service menu should include the following, with the specific plan tailored to individual risks and needs:
- In-patient
- Out-patient
- Drug testing
- AA, NA
- GED
- Mental health counseling
- MRT
- Other individual and group counseling
- Job training
- Job placement
- Other services
It is estimated that at least 80% of those currently being prosecuted and processed through the traditional criminal justice system could be deferred through an alternative intervention system by reorganizing and reconstructing existing services, absent criminal records, fines, costs and fees, sanctions that cause greater destabilization and desperation.
MISDEMEANOR OFFENDERS
- Theft, prostitution, soliciting prostitution, DUI, domestic violence, PD/PI, disorderly conduct, other misdemeanor offenses
- These offenders, among others, can, in the vast majority of cases, be diverted through community based interventions without a criminal record. With well designed individual risk and needs assessments and program support, these offenders can become or continue to be meaningful contributors to their families and the community free of substance abuse or other dysfunctional behaviors and without the destabilizing impact of the criminal justice system as it currently exists, an impact that is harmful to families, the community and victims alike.
FELONY OFFENDERS
- These are generally offenses potentially punishable by more than one year in confinement, such as felony assault, felony theft, vehicular homicide, white collar crimes, and various non-violent offenses, etc. Many of these offenses can be diverted in the same manner as misdemeanor offenses….Prisons should be reserved largely for index crimes: murder, aggravated assault, rape and robbery….plus certain organized crime and terrorist activity. There are definitely people who represent a clear and present danger in society and are unlikely to ever be rehabilitated. These are people who cannot be trusted in the community. Again, this is what prisons are for and this is the way they should be used. It should be noted, however, that incarcerating these offenders, even for long periods of time, would be a fraction of the current incarcerated population.
CORRECTIONS
Corrections refers to everything that happens to an offender after the case is disposed of in court. This typically involves jail or prison time, probation or a combination of the two. There are also specialty alternatives such as drug court programs, drug interventions, mental health programs, domestic violence programs, veterans court programs, environmental programs. Many alternative programs are carried out under probation or diversion supervision. If a defendant is found guilty or pleads guilty, the court imposed outcome ranges from the least punitive which typically would be unsupervised probation with no conditions to jail or prison time or supervision with multiple conditions plus payment of a fine, court cost and victim restitution…. Again, this paper proposes a shift away from punitive sentencing and toward restorative approaches. Specifically, the following components of a transformed corrections system are recommended, keeping in mind that these institutional changes will also require a transformed law enforcement and court system.
- Prison populations should be drastically reduced. Prisons should be reserved for those offenders who represent a clear and present danger to the community. This would reduce the prison population to a fraction of the current population.
- Many of the current drug offenses and non-violent offenses which result in jail or prison time should be diverted into community based alternatives.
- Diversion programs should be vastly expanded to allow by far most offenders to avoid a criminal record by completing a carefully constructed risk and needs driven individualized supervision and intervention plan.
- Except for victim restitution, fines, court costs and fees should be eliminated for criminal offenders. This will contribute to greater stability in the community and enhance the likelihood of rehabilitative success.
- A whole range of services should be available to assist offenders in achieving rehabilitative success, to include:
- Drug and alcohol
- Mental health
- Domestic violence
- MRT/cognitive
- Conflict resolution
- Job training and placement
- Housing assistance
- Budgeting and financial planning
- Family management
- Anger management
IN CONCLUSION
It should be emphasized that transforming the criminal justice system into an intervention and rehabilitative model as opposed to a punitive model will pay massive dividends for victims, families, communities and offenders. By shifting away from incarceration for the vast majority of offenders and into community based alternatives without criminal records, fines, court costs or fees and with carefully designed and executed community based intervention plans, the billions now being spent with horrible outcomes can be greatly reduced but with vastly enhanced outcomes. We must have the courage and conviction as a society to undertake this transformation in order to turn a failed and unjust system into a successful and just system.
The Jordan Turner Foundation is pleased to offer this first installment in a series of resource papers intended to promote essential transformation and advance the common good.