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CEPP Has Worked with Partners in All 50 States

From coast to coast, the Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP) has partnered with state and local governments in 127 counties across the country to create a world where justice enhances well-being for all. Our partnerships have advanced system change, resulting in safer communities and improved outcomes for both justice-involved people and system professionals.

Learn More About CEPP’s Partnerships

This summer, we want to highlight a few of those partnerships, including:

Pretrial system improvements in Wake County, North Carolina;
Dosage probation implementation in three jurisdictions in Minnesota; and
Pretrial assessment implementation in Monterey County, California.

There’s more to come in future CEPP newsletters.

Discover Pretrial Reform in Wake County

Pretrial Improvements with APPR in Wake County, NC

We are helping Wake County, North Carolina build a pretrial system that promotes fairness and equity by balancing community safety, concern for victims, and the rights and needs of individuals facing criminal charges as part of the Learning Site project with CEPP’s Advancing Pretrial Policy & Research (APPR) initiative.

As part of that process, APPR helped bring together judges, elected leaders, and community advocates and reach consensus on a series of recommendations aimed at ensuring the safe and timely release of people from custody during the pretrial phase. The recommendations included implementing the Public Safety Assessment, lowering minimum bonds for some offenses, making sure people are represented by a public defender during their first appearance hearing, and developing pretrial decision tools for magistrates and judges.

As Wake County Commissioner Matt Calabria said in March, “These recommendations will help protect our residents, afford everyone a fair trial, and avoid excessive bail requirements that unnecessarily imprison low-wealth individuals.”

Learn More About the Dosage Probation Model

CEPP’s Dosage Probation Work in Minnesota

Dosage probation is an innovative and research-informed approach to sentencing and supervision. It incentivizes behavior change by providing individuals with an opportunity to earn early discharge if they successfully engage in risk-reduction interventions tailored to their criminogenic needs in a “dose” matched to their risk level.

CEPP has been pioneering the dosage probation model with the National Institute of Corrections in three jurisdictions in Minnesota since 2015. It has improved the alignment of probation departments and their stakeholders around evidence-based practices, treatment and supervision decisions, and holds the potential to help jurisdictions more efficiently allocate limited resources for supervision while decreasing recidivism.

Explore the Public Safety Assessment

Implementation of the Public Safety Assessment in Monterey County, CA

CEPP is providing practitioners in Monterey County, CA with tailored training and technical assistance to help them successfully implement the Public Safety Assessment (PSA), with the goal of improving pretrial outcomes.

During the pretrial phase, decisions are made quickly and often without much information. The PSA provides judicial officers with research-based information that they weigh, along with other information, to make more informed pretrial decisions. When implemented responsibly and as part of comprehensive, systemic pretrial improvements, the PSA can help advance more fair and effective pretrial justice.

CEPP is supporting Monterey County in its implementation of the PSA and will be providing the county with assessor and stakeholder training, quality assurance protocols, and post-implementation support.