March is National Criminal Justice Month

National Criminal Justice Month was established in 2009 by the U.S. Congress to promote societal awareness regarding the causes and consequences of crime, as well as strategies for preventing and responding to crime.

The U.S. has the highest prison population in the world, with over 1.8 million individuals incarcerated, and one of the highest prison population rates in the world. The U.S. has more prisons than colleges. 

According to the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, the U.S. ranks 27th overall in the world. The last time the U.S. was in the top-20 was 2019. These high incarceration rates and low Rule of Law Index scores is not that Americans are committing more crimes, but rather because of the current criminal justice system.

From the Forensics Colleges’ Advocacy Toolkit for Criminal Justice Month, “Many of the inefficiencies of America’s criminal justice system are structural in nature, making them at times insidious and self-replicating, but also fixable. Today’s criminal justice professionals, along with the general public, can play a part in better providing liberty and justice for all.” 

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) calls for “help, not handcuffs,” during Criminal Justice Month because people with mental illnesses are over-represented in the prison system. From NAMI, “People with mental illness are overrepresented in our nation’s jails and prisons. About two million times each year, people with mental illness are booked into jails — often for reasons related to the symptoms of their untreated illness. Roughly two in five people who are incarcerated have a history of mental illness, about double the rate of the general U.S. population. 70% of youth in the juvenile justice system have a diagnosable mental health condition.”

In Vermont, BIPOC, particularly Black and Indigenous folks, are drastically overrepresented in our prisons, according to 2021 data compiled by the Prison Policy Initiative. 

Across the country, and in Vermont especially, restorative justice has shown to be one of the more effective solutions, and it is made possible by community members and volunteers and legislative and law-enforcement buy-in.