This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In 2015, after months of stakeholder conversations and data analysis, the Utah Legislature passed House Bill 348, arguably Utah's most comprehensive criminal justice reform legislation to date. HB348 was the result of a research-driven, moderate process known as Justice Reinvestment, undertaken with assistance from the non-partisan Pew Charitable Trust.

HB348 — supported almost unanimously by both the House and the Senate — included moderate sentencing reforms, funding for transitional and mental health programs, new directives for the management of community supervision, and new requirements for pre-sentence risk assessments.

A year later, our state prison population is finally trending down.

A year later, the predictable rumblings of resistance to change have been heard from some corners of our state.

A few county sheriffs and attorneys are blaming the Justice Reinvestment Initiative for all manner of social ills. They insist that dropping the penalty for simple drug possession from a third degree felony (punishable by up to five years in prison) to a Class A misdemeanor (punishable by up to one year in jail) is somehow fueling crime waves, drug addiction and jail overcrowding. Where is the actual data to support these assertions?

Ground-level public servants have complained that data-driven risk assessments are "wrong." They insist they can better assess the risk level of alleged offenders by using their "gut instinct" from decades on the job.

The reforms contained in HB348, which we always supported but openly acknowledged as far short of groundbreaking, have become the scapegoat for all that is wrong in Utah's criminal justice system.

The reality is, however, that Utah's criminal justice system was not, before Justice Reinvestment, working all that well. That's why state leaders — the governor, the state Supreme Court, the Legislature, with support from prosecutors, victim and prisoner advocates, the Department of Corrections and substance abuse treatment providers — undertook the Justice Reinvestment process in the first place.

In 2013, our prison population was growing, despite declining crime rates. Projections indicated that the soon-to-be relocated prison would need to be built with an additional 2,700 beds to accommodate future growth. Most incoming inmates were serving time for non-violent offenses.

Length of stay for Utah prison inmates was growing, too. If you committed a crime in 2013, you were likely to stay about 20 percent more time in prison than you would have for the same crime in 2003, without any added public safety benefits.

Our recidivism rate was through the roof and rising. Nearly one-half of people released from prison were going back — not for new offenses, but for minor parole violations.

It would be a mistake for policymakers to roll back the small steps toward criminal justice reform we made in 2015, letting the state slide back into these dismal statistics.

We need to see more reform, not less.

Last year, Utahns made their opinions clear: They don't believe people should be in prison for drug possession. They don't want to incarcerate mentally ill people, or people with substance abuse problems. They believe people should receive help and support as they transition out of prison, not be punished for struggling during a difficult time.

Utah legislators should listen to their constituents, not unrealistic predictions based on nothing more than "gut reactions." Nobody said reform was going to be easy – only that it was the right and prudent thing to do.

Another wave of reforms in the spirit of Justice Reinvestment will be proposed in during the upcoming session. We hope that state policymakers will support these reforms and continue to build on HB348's momentum, rather than roll back Justice Reinvestment before it has time to succeed.

Andrew Riggle, Jean Hill and Anna Brower are members of People Not Prisons, a loose coalition of advocacy groups working on behalf of people with mental health conditions, people recovering from substance use disorders, and men and women caught up in Utah's criminal justice system.