Houston, along with many cities across the United States, has experienced a rise in homicides over the last few years, as well as high poverty and unemployment rates. These social distress factors and crime rates coincide with high incarceration rates, as Houston contains four of the top 30 zip codes in Texas with the highest prison populations. The State of Texas has a higher incarceration rate than the national average, and Houston and Harris County, like counties all over the country, disproportionately incarcerate Black adults and youth.
There is an urgent need for solutions that are developed collaboratively between local research institutions, community organizations, and community members with lived experience that are designed to keep individuals, particularly people of color, out of the criminal legal system while maintaining public safety. Criminal legal system involvement negatively affects employment opportunities and achieved socioeconomic status, housing access, mental health, and other health outcomes, and many of these factors, in turn, predict criminal legal system involvement. The cyclical nature of incarceration and violent crime is clear, but specific community needs and informed solutions require further investigation.
