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Criminal Justice Reforms
Criminal Justice Reforms

Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) Workgroup

On January 25, 2022, the Board of Supervisors approved a referral from Supervisor Ellenberg related to improving public safety and justice within Santa Clara County through providing more comprehensive behavioral health care and expanding community-based alternatives to pre-trial incarceration. Included as part of this referral was a workplan for a series of special sessions with the goal to develop recommendations for community-based alternatives to incarceration in an effort to reduce the jail population. The special meeting series was to include representatives from government agencies, community advocates, and directly impacted individuals as members of the Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) Workgroup to collaborate, share knowledge, and review current alternatives to incarceration for efficacy and/or expansion as well as new options (e.g., community support, housing options, alternative forms of accountability through transformative justice).

The Community-Based Alternatives to Incarceration Workplan established three workgroups: Intervention at the Start, Criminal-Legal Process, and Re-Entry. The ATI workgroups correspond to “key intercept points of engagement with the criminal-legal system” and were established to identify opportunities at each of the intercept points to safely divert people from incarceration and/or reduce the need for incarceration in the first place. After eight months of regular meetings and discussion, the workgroups collectively identified 37 separate potential strategies to consider, organized under eight broad recommendations, which were presented to the Board of Supervisors on June 6, 2023. The ATI Workgroup Recommendations Implementation Plan was presented to the Board of Supervisors on October 3, 2023.