"How the Criminal Justice System's COVID-19 Response has Provided Valuable Lessons for Broader Reform"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new research brief written by multiple authors and distributed by RAND Corporation.  I recommend the full document, and here is how it is introduced:

To better understand the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has created within the criminal justice system and how the various sectors of the system have adapted to those challenges, the Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative conducted a series of panel workshops with representatives of different sectors within the system.  Panels focused on law enforcement, the court system, institutional corrections, community corrections, victim services providers, and community organizations.  This brief presents key lessons learned and recommendations offered by panel workshop participants.

And here is a closing section that is dear to my data-nerd heart:

There is an urgent need to assess what data need to be collected now, as the pandemic continues, for fear of losing the chance to assess what has been learned and how the changes made have performed.  For example, in some agencies, there have been significant differences in the doses of justice intervention received by different people, and solid information about how those doses varied might become very difficult to reconstruct after their program involvement is complete.  What the system did — and the value of it continuing to do some of those things — is part of the story, and the collection of data to support research and evaluation efforts going forward can help support the case for maintaining some of those practices.  And some of the most important lessons from the pandemic come from what the system did not do, including the choice to not arrest many people and not require some individuals to complete their original sentences or periods of detention for particular crimes and violations.  Lessons can be learned from what that inaction means for potential changes that could be made to the justice system of the future.