Criminal Justice

Community supervision, or community corrections, is a set of programs that provide for the supervision of individuals convicted of crimes in their local community versus placing them in a secure correctional facility. The two most common types of community supervision are probation and parole. Both types of programs can be completed in combination with other […]

Today the House passed a criminal justice reform bill that will bring changes to the federal justice system in the United States for the first time in a decade. The following statement is by Stand Together Trust’s Senior Fellow Vikrant Reddy: “Today federal policy makers have made the decision to remove barriers to redemption for […]

Small business and startup-focused magazine Inc. is hosting its annual gala this week. One of the topics up for discussion? The role business can play in the formerly incarcerated reentering their communities.

Successful reentry programs give former offenders opportunities to support themselves through legitimate and productive work, reducing recidivism and improving public safety. American prisons and jails hold over 2.1 million individuals at any given time and almost every one of these individuals will return to their community once they have been found innocent or complete the […]

Policing in the United States has grown and changed over hundreds of years. Here’s why the militarization of police doesn’t necessarily keep us safer. The increased militarization of police has occurred alongside a significant decline in public trust for law enforcement agencies. While the public continues to respect their own community’s law enforcement agencies, public […]

A new survey—conducted by Stand Together Trust and the Pretrial Justice Institute—asked Americans about their knowledge and opinion of the United States’ pretrial justice system. Respondents were clear: the current system favors the wealthy and must be reformed.

Arlington, VA, July 12, 2018 – The Pretrial Justice Institute (PJI) and Stand Together Trust (formerly STT) released a study today that shows strong support among Americans for commonsense changes to the criminal justice system that would make it fairer for people who have been arrested but not convicted of a crime. The poll finds […]

Civil asset forfeiture is a practice that allows law enforcement to seize property and take possession of it based merely on the belief that the property may have been involved in a crime. Under civil asset forfeiture,  law enforcement is authorized to take the property without beginning criminal proceedings against a defendant. Why is this […]

June 22, 2018, Arlington, VA – The U.S. Supreme Court today issued its ruling in Carpenter vs. United States, holding that law enforcement cannot obtain without a warrant the historical records of an individual’s movements as tracked by cellphone towers. Timothy Carpenter, was convicted based on cell tower records tracking his movements for 127 days, […]

American prisons house more than 1.5 million individuals, an increase of more than 390 percent since 1978. This growth persisted even in the face of an overarching decline in crime rates since the 1990s and the longest terms of incarceration since we began to collect accurate data. Over 600,000 men and women are released from federal and state prisons each […]