TITLE
Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all necessary documents, and any amendments, to receive and expend grant funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in the amount of $557,124 over a two-year period, to fund two positions to support the City’s Data-Driven Justice Initiative, beginning January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2019; and
Increase appropriations in the General Grants Fund (SR 120) in the City Manager Department (CM) by $557,124, offset by grant revenue. (Citywide)
DISCUSSION
In October 2016, the City of Long Beach (City) joined the White House Data-Driven Justice Initiative (DDJ), joining more than 100 cities seeking to disrupt the cycle of incarceration. DDJ communities bring together data from across criminal justice and health systems to identify the individuals with the highest number of contacts with police, ambulance, emergency departments, and other services, and link them to health, behavioral health, and social services in the community, with a goal of reducing overreliance on emergency healthcare and encounters with the criminal justice system.
DDJ Long Beach is part of the larger portfolio of the Long Beach Innovation Team (i-team). With the grant funding, the i-team, in collaboration with several City departments, will implement the following strategies that have proven to be effective in reducing unnecessary incarcerations:
Creating or expanding local data exchanges that combine justice and health system information, with appropriate legal and privacy protections, to identify multiple system users;
Diverting this population, as well as people who may be committing low-level crimes primarily due to mental illness, from the criminal justice system prior to arrest, where appropriate, and linking them to proper care management; and,
Implementing data-driven risk assessment tools to ensure decisions on pre-trial release are informed by empirically validated methods of evaluating defendants' r...
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