Overview
Well-functioning criminal justice coordinating councils can be vitally important resources for local governments as they seek to fulfill their mandates to assure public safety and fair treatment of all, while coping with reduced budgets. The councils can provide a forum for identifying issues and, depending on their structure and role in county or city government, can be instrumental in setting priorities, allocating resources, and planning to address key systemic issues.
In 1995, Senate Bill 1145 required every county to convene a Local Public Safety Coordinating Council (LPSCC). While LPSCCs across the state engage in a variety of activities to improve system-wide communication and collaboration, their primary purpose is to:
- Coordinate local criminal justice policy and planning;
- Make recommendations to the county board of commissioners regarding the use of state and county resources to supervise local offenders;
- And since 2014, develop and approve their county’s Justice Reinvestment Grant program.
In order to engage in high-level policy planning and decision-making, LPSCC membership must include key local public safety system partners:
- Police Chief
- Sheriff
- District Attorney
- State Court Judge
- Public Defender
- Director of Community Corrections
- County Commissioner
- Juvenile Department Director
- Health Director
- Citizen
- City Councilor or Mayor
- Oregon State Police representative
- And Oregon Youth Authority representative.
“Improved planning and coordination help individual justice agencies become more efficient, productive, and effective. Such improvements also help officials of general government such as the city mayor, board of supervisors, and county commissioners evaluate and make decisions about the justice system and its cost and performance. Many local governments also are finding that comprehensive system wide planning (interagency and cross-jurisdictional) helps to streamline the entire local system of justice, eliminating duplication, filling service gaps, and generally improving the quality of service while controlling costs.”
Resources“Research and experience have produced a “collective wisdom” about how to create, staff, evaluate, and rejuvenate Criminal Justice Coordinating Committees.”
– Guidelines for Developing a Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee
Michael R. Jones | National Institute of Corrections
“The guide will help the elected and appointed officials of general government and the executives of local justice systems from jurisdictions of all sizes create or strengthen the staffing support of their local CJCC, which in turn strengthens the effectiveness of the CJCC itself. The guide is especially useful for CJCC members who want data, analyses, and information to inform their agency-level and systemic policy decisions and programs as they work toward a more evidence-based and cost-effective local justice system.”
Robert C. Cushman | National Institute of Corrections
“This guide offers advice on how CJCCs can be initiated within local governments, describes the range of planning and coordinating activities that might be undertaken, describes alternative organizational forms for CJCCs, presents guidelines for operating a CJCC, and describes the benefits local governments can expect to derive from these activities.”