A new partnership between St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and the Vera Institute of Justice will work to reduce racial disparities in the city’s criminal legal system by at least 20% through data-driven diversion efforts and policy changes.
The partnership includes Gardner working with a local organization, Freedom Community Center, through Vera Institute’s Reshaping Prosecution campaign.
Jami Hodge, director of the Reshaping Prosecution campaign, said that, in part, the program launched to help those prosecutors deliver on campaign promises of criminal justice reform. Vera will provide assistance with data analysis, staff training, community engagement and policy support.
Hodge said Gardner and Mike Milton, founder and CEO of the Freedom Community Center, a newly formed (not yet formally launched) organization that “seeks to interrupt violence by disrupting harm inflicted by the criminal legal system and harm that happens within communities.”
Milton and Gardner will work together to create a diversion program that does not limit participation on the basis of previous criminal history or ability to pay, in an effort to keep people out of jail and actively engaged in the community.
Milton said that when police write up a criminal complaint and give it to Gardner’s officer, she and her prosecutors will be able to decide to instead send the defendant to the center’s community pre-charge program, and if they successfully complete the program they will not be charged.
“The reason why we use this type of model is because we believe that community and accountability actually does foster true transformation,” Milton said. “And we believe that jail doesn’t foster that type of transformation.”
Hodge said it’s important to chip away at the root causes of crime — things like poverty and public health issues — to fight racial injustices that occur within the legal system. She noted that while previous programs have succeeded in reducing incarceration rates, the problem is even in those decreases the incarceration rates of Black people increased.
This is the second time Gardner has partnered with the Vera Institute of Justice, the first time being in 2017 during the pilot phase of what would become the Reshaping Prosecution program.
“We’re excited to have community-based organizations who are willing to come to the table,” Hodges said. “That to me is what excites me most about this campaign — that it will truly be a partnership that it’s not just looking at a government actor, a prosecutor, to figure out the answers to these really deeply-rooted problems of racial injustice but to bring to the table those who truly are deeply embedded in the communities so that we can get the solutions that lead to real impact.”