Reducing the Harms of Criminal Legal System Involvement

scales of justice

Criminal legal system involvement often creates additional barriers to stability and recovery, compounding the challenges people face. We examine how fines and fees, crisis response, incarceration, and supervision affect access to housing, employment, and healthcare—and how these impacts ripple through families and communities. Through this work, we aim to inform policies that reduce harms and promote stability and opportunity.

Our current projects include examining how fines and fees accumulate and impact long-term financial stability, studying the effects of driver’s license suspensions for unpaid fines and fees, including on employment; and analyzing alternatives to law enforcement-led crisis response.

Our Current Projects

Reducing the Burden of Fines and Fees
Person on the phone looking worried with bills on the table in front of them
Ending License Suspensions for Court Debt
close up of a person's hand holding a driver's license out of the driver's side car window
Improving Responses to Behavioral Health Crises
Back of african american senior female patient sitting on bed in sunny hospital room