Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A governor’s commitment to reforming a state’s criminal justice system creates the mandate necessary for transformational change. To be enduring, reform efforts must bolster the state administering agency’s capacity to use data to inform policy and promote wider adoption of evidence-based programming. The National Governors (NGA), in partnership with the National Criminal Justice Association, are working together on a joint initiative to support system-wide criminal justice reform in five states. This initiative, known as the National Criminal Justice Reform Project (NCJRP), supports planning and implementation of data-driven, evidence-based reform focused on one or more areas of state policy and practice. NGA is currently working in Oregon and Vermont on system-wide pretrial reform efforts. NGA will provide an overview of their ongoing pretrial reform work, and discuss challenges and lessons learned from NCJRP states.