The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is giving 20 jails of all sizes $150,000 each to come up with ways to reduce the number of people unnecessarily behind bars.
The grants are the first step in the Chicago-based charitable group's plan to spend $75 million over the next five years to bring more fairness to the criminal justice system.
"At the end of the day, what we're talking about is systemic change," said Julia Stasch, MacArthur's president.
About 12 million people pass through the roughly 3,000 local jails in the U.S. every year, most for nonviolent offenses. MacArthur officials and others note that jails, which unlike state prisons mostly detain inmates who are pre-trial, have increasingly become warehouses for mentally ill people and those too poor to afford bail.
[For more of this story, written by Jake Peason, go to http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireS...rs-us-jails-31325644]
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