Portland State selected to join Safety and Justice Challenge Research Consortium

Portland State University's Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and its Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute (CJPRI) has been selected to join the Safety and Justice Challenge Research Consortium, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As one of 16 institutions nationwide to join the consortium, PSU will undertake research projects to support and document efforts to improve local criminal justice systems across the country that are working to safely reduce over-reliance on jails, focusing on addressing the disproportionate impact on low-income individuals and communities of color.

"PSU's admission into the Safety and Justice Consortium is an exciting development for criminal justice and aligns meaningfully with the great work happening across our campus to support justice and equity, reduce disproportionate negative impacts on communities of color and find pathways for people who are justice impacted," said Ame Lambert, PSU's vice president for Global Diversity and Inclusion. "We look forward to the opportunities for learning and impact from this collaborative effort."

The Safety and Justice Challenge was developed by the MacArthur Foundation as a national initiative to help jurisdictions across the country implement data-informed strategies that will reduce the misuse and overuse of jails and reduce racial and ethnic disparities present across the criminal justice system. To date, the Foundation has invested $217 million in grants to more than 50 jurisdictions implementing jail-based reforms. From its inception, the SJC has relied heavily on data to both inform the development of criminal justice reform strategies and assess progress toward initiative goals and objectives.

"We are excited to be part of this short list of institutions for several reasons. With Multnomah County being one of the Safety and Justice Challenge sites, perhaps the most exciting part is that our research will help to directly serve and inform our home city and county," said Christopher Campbell, ​​associate professor of criminology and criminal justice.

As a member of the Safety and Justice Challenge Research Consortium, Portland State will have access to funding and research projects that build on the work already being completed by CJPRI and the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

"Being part of the Consortium will help us to continue to translate other work we have been doing that directly relate to the Safety and Justice Challenge," Campbell said. "For example, since 2019, we have been examining the impacts of pretrial detention across Oregon and the utility of pretrial risk assessment. That work demonstrates ways to identify low risk defendants and release them sooner to reduce unnecessary negative impacts of due process such as job loss."

Additionally, PSU's work on Justice Reinvestment has highlighted that counties which actively divert prison-bound people convicted of low level offenses have helped to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing, and reduce the state's over-reliance on prisons and jails as a punishment.

"This is a rather critical time for us to help provide scientific evidence for policy decisions," Campbell said. "As counties aim to navigate the new law re-criminalizing controlled substance possession (HB 4002), and implement changes to pretrial supervision (SB 48), we aim to help the county understand how such changes impact the goal of reducing disparities in crime, justice and custody."