This toolkit authored by Barbara E. Bloom, Ph.D. "describes how counties can benefit from developing criminal justice solutions focused on women”. Meeting the Needs of Women in California's County Justice Systems: A Toolkit for Policymakers and Practitioners provides suggestions for innovative and focused interventions, an overview of risk and needs assessments, recommendations for creating community-based options for women, and key steps for working toward sustainable reductions in the number of women in county jails.

Goals of the toolkit:

• Ensure that local justice systems are more gender-responsive and that women and their specific needs are not overlooked as decision-makers implement new policies and practices in a changing criminal justice landscape;
• Enable county justice systems to take full advantage of significant new state and federal funding streams available to implement rehabilitative alternatives to jail incarceration;
• Help safely reduce counties’ reliance on incarceration through implementing less restrictive alternatives and developing strategies to better manage female jail populations; and
• Provide information on research-based, community-based programs and services for women in the justice system.

Read the full toolkit

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This announcement is available at NIC's Gender-Responsive News for Women and Girls.  Feel free to forward to friends and colleagues.  Subscribe to the newsletter at http://nicic.gov/go/subscribe.

For additional resources on Justice-Involved Women go to NIC’s Women Offenders.