DN editorial: Grant key to changing city's criminal-justice system

WITH A new grant of $3.5 million, the city's criminal-justice system could be making the most important change in the last 50 years, and reduce the city's jail population by 34 percent. That means going from about 7,500 inmates housed in the city's prisons to under 5,000 over the next three years.

The project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation with a grant to the city's Criminal Justice Advisory Board, could not only ease the chronic problem of prison overcrowding, but also change how law enforcement and the judicial system handle criminal cases that enter the system.

Right now, according to District Attorney Seth Williams, 64 percent of the inmates in city prisons have not been tried or sentenced for their alleged crimes. Many are awaiting trial and the average time these inmates spend in jail is 95 days - the highest number in the nation.

For decades, various parties in the system have looked at these numbers and agreed they are too high. There is no need to incarcerate so many, especially those charged with nonviolent offenses. One of the problems, says Williams, is that "the criminal-justice system is a series of silos."

Each segment works independently of the others. We have an independently elected district attorney, a court system that is a separate branch of government, and a Police Department that answers only to the mayor.

Is bail set too high for some offenders? Yes, but bail is the exclusive province of the courts.

Do police clog the system with too many arrests? They have in the past - but leave it to the others in the system to manage the increased flow.

A few years ago, those in the system - the list includes the D.A.'s office, the president judges of the city's courts and the mayor's office - decided enough was enough. Something had to be done to stop the parties from forming a circle and pointing at the other guy when it came to responsibility for prison overcrowding.

The Criminal Justice Advisory Board (or C-JAB, as it is called) began work on tearing down the silos. The group includes representatives of every corner of the system - courts, probation and parole, the Sheriff's Office, the Defenders Association, the police and those in charge of the prison system.

The possibility of getting a MacArthur grant spurred them to develop a plan and go for the money. More than 190 jurisdictions applied; that was later culled to 20. Philadelphia ended up as one of the 11 that got grants - and its amount is the highest.

The effort is overseen by Ben Lerner, named by Mayor Kenney to be deputy managing director for criminal justice. Lerner is a former judge, who once ran the Defenders Association, and has had hundreds of assistant district attorneys and police officers appear in his court. He's the right man for the job.

The strategies being discussed include everything from bias training for police, finding alternatives to bail, treatment instead of jail for drug users, and an expansion of use of electronic monitoring devices for violators of probation or those awaiting trial.

The C-JAB has taken the first steps in changing the culture of the criminal-justice system.

Now, let's hope they can change the numbers so fewer people languish in jail.