CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Working with prosecutors, judges and our community to create a new system of criminal justice by
adding pretrial services and putting an end to cash bail and discretionary youth bindover.

ACTIVE CAMPAIGNS

Discretionary Youth Bindover

We need to stop needlessly throwing our kids into adult prisons.
 It’s cruel and unusually common in Cuyahoga County.

Our kids don’t belong in adult prisons.

Kids in adult prison are 36x more likely to die by suicide.

They’re at greater risk for sexual abuse, including rape.

Less than 30% of Cuyahoga County residents are people of color, yet 91% of youth bound over to the adult system are Black or Brown.

Some kids make terrible decisions with horrendous consequences. But kids are not adults. They don’t think like adults, act like adults or understand the world like adults.

We can and should hold kids accountable, but throwing them into adult prisons isn’t the answer.

Because when it comes to kids, research shows getting “tough on crime” doesn’t make our community any safer. It only leads to more poverty, trauma, desperation, crime, broken homes and broken lives.

That’s why GCC is working with our member institutions, prosecutors, judges and our community to make intervention programs the de facto standard when it comes to juvenile justice.

Together we can hold children accountable and protect them from a predatory adult criminal justice system. And we can do it while building a safer, stronger Greater Cleveland.

Help GCC end the abuse of Discretionary Youth Bindover.

Pretrial Justice

Punishing people just for being poor. That’s what the cash  bail system in Ohio does.

Cash bail and the price of poverty

People in Cuyahoga County — people who have not yet been convicted of a crime — routinely spend weeks or months in jail for minor, non-violent offenses simply because they cannot afford bail. Sometimes they lose their kids, their jobs, their homes.

This is not justice. GCC is committed to preventing unjust jail before trial. Cuyahoga County needs system-wide change. We are working with our County Executive, our new County Council members and our newly elected judges.

Want to take
action and
create change?

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legacy CAMPAIGNS

Decriminalization of mental illness

We continued our relentless campaign for a long-needed mental health and addiction crisis diversion center to keep people out of jail. In April 2021, Cuyahoga County announced its opening.

Civil Rights Unit: A First!

Our organizing work resulted in the creation of Cuyahoga County’s first-ever Civil Rights Unit, a reduction in overcharging for non-violent offenses by 20% between 2012 and 2016 and the creation of a third Drug Court in Cuyahoga County whose criteria do not exclude people of color.

SEE OUR OTHER focus areas

VOTer
engagement

Fighting voter suppression, depression and regression by mobilizing people to vote in low-propensity voting neighborhoods.