Backed by Millions in Grants, a New Prison Reform Initiative Gains Steam

Last spring, Arnold Ventures took aim at the nation’s prison system, pledging $17 million in grants to two organizations: The Vera Institute of Justice and the Urban Institute. The latter organization just announced that five states have signed on to its program aimed at making prisons safer and more humane, and thus better to foster a rehabilitative setting.

Urban Institute received $10 million from Arnold for its Prison Research and Innovation Network. Urban will rely on data collection and research to better understand the prison environment and pilot strategies aimed at improving rehabilitation of inmates.

At the winter conference of the American Correctional Association, Urban Institute announced that five states would participate in this new research network: Vermont, Colorado, Missouri, Delaware and Iowa. The participating states will serve as the pilot sites for new interventions, as well as develop metrics on the health, safety, and conditions of their prison systems.

Taking on “Closed Systems”

The Urban-Arnold alliance is ambitious, to say the least. Much has been written about America’s problem with mass incarceration. The nation’s prison population exceeds that of some of the country’s largest cities. In addition, criminal justice and corrections consume a large share of state budgets. But despite the financial and human costs of incarceration, prisons remain some of the nation’s least transparent institutions.

In a previous post in this space, Nancy La Vigne, vice president of justice policy at the Urban Institute, observed that prisons are “uniquely closed systems, designed to be out of sight and out of mind. It can be hard for researchers to gain access.” She went on to describe a protective culture among corrections officials that views sharing data as opening themselves to additional scrutiny.

The Prison Research Innovation Network is designed to change that by fostering partnerships between researchers and corrections officials. Through data and evidence gathered, Urban hopes that Colorado, Vermont, Missouri, Delaware and Iowa will serve as models for more effective practices in prison operations, design and culture. The network is a five-year initiative just entering the first phase with these five participating states. Much work lies ahead, but Urban Institute and its funder are optimistic.

“We’re in the middle of a public awakening about the need to reform prisons, due partly to the fact that so many people have been touched by the justice system—one in two people have a family member who’s been incarcerated,” said Amy Solomon, vice president for criminal justice at Arnold. “The public, policymakers on the left and right, and many corrections leaders now recognize we must downsize our prisons and refocus them on improving well-being and increasing prospects for successful reentry.”

A Growing Network

La Vigne expressed optimism that the network, with its new state partners, will lead to fostering more rehabilitative environments. “Their leadership and commitment to transparency and accountability will help spur lasting change for people who live and work in prisons,” she said of the states involved.

Urban’s support for each state participating in the network will look something like this:

Each state will receive a grant of up to $100,000 to support a full-time prison research innovation manager to work onsite at a pilot facility. Each state’s manager will collaborate with prison officials to establish a model of transparency, accountability and innovation within that facility.
Each state will also receive up to $100,000 a year to support the research partner’s activities.
Experts affiliated with Urban Institute, Arnold and the network’s advisory board will provide technical assistance to states, as well as feedback on their reform efforts.
Opportunities for peer learning across sites will be available.

The Prison Research Innovation Network is part of a broader prison reform strategy at Arnold. In addition to Urban’s research network, Arnold’s prison reform initiatives also include a $7 million grant to the Vera Institute’s Reimagining Prison and Restoring Promise initiatives. The funder’s support will allow Vera to open reimagined housing units for young adults in three state corrections agencies—Connecticut, Massachusetts and South Carolina—as well as bolster efforts to reshape narratives about prisons, the inmates incarcerated in them, and the correctional officers and other staff employed at the prisons.

Further, the research-heavy approaches taken by Urban and Vera align with Arnold’s belief that prison reform is one strand in a comprehensive criminal justice reform campaign that targets not only prison reform, but also probation and parole, and pretrial justice. Overall, the funder has poured more than $240 million into various criminal justice initiatives and programs.

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