CEPP’s 2024 Year in Review

We’re excited to share our Year in Review as we wrap up 2024! It’s been a year of growth, impact, and transformation, and we’re proud to highlight our progress toward our mission of creating a world where justice enhances well-being for all.

We worked on large and small projects that meaningfully improved practitioners’ efforts to create a justice system that works for all by:

• Creating new solutions-focused resources for the field to support pretrial, reentry, and everything in between
• Investing thousands of hours training criminal justice professionals all around the country 
• Collaborating with directly impacted people on multiple projects to make policies and practices more equitable
• Partnering with state and local leaders, parole boards, facility staff, and community supervision teams, as well as federal agencies, private foundations, nonprofits, and community leaders, to identify challenges and implement equity-driven solutions

We couldn’t have done it without the incredible support of our funders and partners! Together, we’re making a lasting difference.

CEPP partners with state and local justice systems and practitioners to help them more clearly identify their challenges and implement solutions. We work alongside federal agencies, private foundations, state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and community leaders to advance equity-centered, solutions-focused approaches to advancing justice.

CEPP’s major initiatives fill critical gaps in the criminal justice field with training, support, and resources.

We have been entrusted with establishing and maintaining multi-year initiatives, including in partnership with the federal government.

This past year marked a milestone with the official launch of the Community Supervision Resource Center (CSRC), a bold step forward in transforming community supervision practices. Thanks to funding from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), CEPP established and now operates the CSRC, with a clear goal: to help pretrial, probation, and parole agencies align their operations with cutting-edge, evidence-based practices. In its inaugural year, the CSRC made an immediate impact, offering virtual trainings, responding to agencies’ unique needs, and championing innovation in supervision. We introduced new resources, including a self-assessment tool for releasing authorities, a comprehensive language guide, and an infographic, and we shared emerging best practices from Massachusetts and Indiana. But we didn’t stop there: our team took the message on the road, connecting with partners at national conferences to showcase the wealth of resources the CSRC offers.

CEPP’s Advancing Pretrial Policy & Research (APPR) initiative has promoted and facilitated pretrial justice advancements for the last five years. This year was no different. Guided by research, data, and principles of dignity and equity, APPR hosted dozens of training sessions and conference workshops, including law enforcement pretrial training, workshops on domestic violence and intimate partner violence, and training for judges. APPR also continued to provide technical assistance and ongoing support to jurisdictions making pretrial improvements and to develop resources with practical guidance for advancing pretrial justice.

CEPP’s gender equity work took us to Florida, Maine, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and Washington to promote and support the use of gender-responsive and trauma-informed policies and practices in institutions and during community supervision. We also developed new tools for people at the system’s front end—during the pretrial period—and back end—during people’s transition back to the community.

This year was the pilot year of CEPP’s new Rural Pretrial Practitioners Fellowship, which supports and enhances the skills and knowledge of pretrial professionals working in rural areas. The program provides participants with specialized training, resources, and networking opportunities to address the unique challenges and dynamics of pretrial practices in rural communities. We are partnering with the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) to expand the program in 2025.

CEPP continued its tradition of leading statewide initiatives in collaboration with local leaders to support the unique goals, values, and conditions of the communities we serve. Examples include:

• Implementing new legislation for the Safety, Accountability, Fairness, and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act in Illinois
• Leading evidence-based system improvements and establishing the Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council (JRAC) in Indiana’s 92 counties
• Applying the Dosage Probation Model, an innovative, research-based approach to sentencing and supervision, in Minnesota

CEPP’s resources help inform the justice field and advance change to systems and practices.

CEPP has decades of experience leading national and local change strategies and creating resource materials to support the planning and implementation of research-informed policies and practices. Here are just some of the resources we created in 2024:

• Community Engagement Toolkit
• Gender Justice Pretrial Toolkit 
• A Self-Assessment Guide for Releasing Authorities to Enhance Community Supervision Practices 
• Language Guide: Words and Phrases to Effect Positive Change in Community Supervision Agencies 
• Returning Home: My Guide to Community Reentry 

CEPP partners with people with lived experience to co-create community justice strategies that increase well-being for all.

CEPP is working closely with a team of currently and formerly incarcerated people to apply their lived experience, collective skills, and intellectual power to CEPP’s initiatives. This year, CEPP launched its first cohort of Justice Policy Consultants and started integrating their expertise into CEPP projects. 

CEPP’s Opportunity Scholars project supports people with lived experience in the carceral system to build a community of peer support, create a digital student network, and bring together a coalition of faculty, learners, and community leaders. Opportunity Scholars serve as peer mentors and lead projects that center on critical community justice, gender equity, and youth justice work nationwide.

CEPP’s training and technical assistance efforts continue to enhance the field’s capacity to support evidence-based, sustainable justice system change.

We logged more than 248 hours of training and support to over 6,000 people this year. Check out all the places where our work took place.

Our team members bring a wealth of knowledge, years of experience, and a deep understanding of justice-related issues. We continued to display our unique expertise at national conferences and convenings, private board meetings, correctional facilities, national and local media, and everywhere in between. We even launched a YouTube Channel with videos on pretrial practices, expert testimony, and ways to implement system change.

A participant from CEPP’s Rural Pretrial Practitioners Fellowship:

“The skills I learned during the [Fellowship] are invaluable. I feel much more confident in my knowledge of pretrial practices, presenting ideas to administration, and leading projects amongst our team. The [Fellowship] has assisted in laying the groundwork for many long-term projects advancing pretrial reform in [our] county.”

A CSRC training attendee: 

“Thank you for including the voice and perspective of someone who has been directly impacted by the community supervision process. Their perspective was very important to this conversation and makes this REAL.”

A Court Administrator from the Youngstown Municipal Court, Ohio, working with APPR:

“We use APPR resources daily, whether it’s the PSA [Public Safety Assessment] scoring app, our release conditions matrix, the APPR workspace for training new staff. We can’t operate in our current system without the resources that APPR’s provided.”

Don’t miss what CEPP has in store for the field in 2025! Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn to ensure you never miss an update. Would you like to work with us? Contact us today!