As the United States grapples with how to undo and repair the far-reaching harms caused by mass criminalization and incarceration, the elimination of legal debt offers the chance to undertake a relatively small change that would have an immense impact.
This qualitative study seeks to understand how formerly incarcerated individuals in Rhode Island conceptualize their mental health and perceive obstacles to accessing and utilizing mental health services following recent incarceration.
Through our collaboration with Center for Health Care Strategies, this report explores the role of health system power and accountability and outlines key recommendations to guide health systems — particularly safety-net systems in communities experiencing significant health disparities — in shifting the balance to involve community members in decision-making and creating opportunities for greater accountability.
In early 2022, CHJT released a report about the lack of statewide criminal justice planning in RI. This report highlighted the need for an inter-agency strategic plan to improve public health and community safety, reduce costs and harm caused by the justice system, and improve statewide outcomes.
Rhode Island’s positions and values on criminal legal system reform are reflected in the state budget. The budget sets the financial priorities for the state, and in doing so makes an implicit statement about our commitments. How much do we invest in justice agencies and how much do we invest in community-based services? How much do we invest in crime prevention vs. crime response? How much do we invest in healing victims of harm and how much do we invest in trying to create new pathways for people who’ve harmed others?
We believe there should be more robust dialogue in RI about what our communities think about the answers. Every year, we will publish a budget summary using a criminal justice lens to start that conversation.
For our inaugural budget summary, we a providing an overview of new funding being allocated to agencies and projects related to three categories: (1) criminal justice infrastructure, (2) community investments, and (3) opioid and other substance use programming.
If you have ideas for how this document should evolve in future years, please share them with us at [email protected].
The State of Rhode Island spends millions of general revenue dollars each year to support its administration of justice, in addition to receiving and spending millions of federal dollars; yet there is no current strategic plan that guides this spending from year to year.
For more than a decade, RI has been lacking sustained leadership, strategy and collaboration across state agencies that serve individuals involved in the justice system. As a consequence of the State’s lack of planning, there is no clear statewide vision or long-term goals for RI’s criminal justice system.
Across the United States, tens of millions of Americans are in debt to their local and state criminal justice systems due to costs associated with criminal convictions. While there is no mechanism for collecting national data on criminal justice debt, state level data indicates that billions of dollars are owed to courts and corrections agencies nationwide. While there is a growing critical discussion about the legal and economic impacts of criminal justice debt, less attention has been paid to the devastating health impacts of these legal financial obligations.
Involvement in the criminal justice system is one of the most fundamental upstream determinants of health. Fortunately, a model for helping patients navigate legal issues that negatively affect their health does exist in medicine: the medical–legal partnership.
