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JRAC moves to two‑year strategy; members prioritize housing, co‑response, treatment beds and expungement reforms
Summary
JRAC refocused its planning on a two‑year cycle at a workshop, asking members to select feasible priorities and nominate accountable leads for each goal.
A strategic‑planning workshop at the Justice Resource and Accountability Council (JRAC) refocused the group's work onto a two‑year planning horizon and solicited member input on feasible priorities the council can advance in that window.
The meeting presenter explained that JRAC's 2020 five‑year plan (labeled the 2025 plan) had 3 strategic areas, 7 goals, 15 initiatives and 44 actions; staff told members that only 10 of those actions could be checked as complete and that recent events (COVID and other disruptions) made a condensed, two‑year plan more practical.
The presenter invited table groups to pick two to three priorities each, then posted the groups' recommendations to the wall. Prominent priorities that emerged included continued work on the MacArthur Just Home engagement; systematizing and expanding co‑response across Buncombe County; expanding inpatient and low‑barrier treatment bed capacity; implementing a law‑enforcement assisted diversion program; forming a mental‑health treatment court; improving law‑enforcement handling and enforcement of pretrial violations; streamlining involuntary commitment procedures in coordination with the state; and addressing technical and process problems with automatic expungements and driver's‑license restoration programs.
Donald Bruce, a long‑time JRAC member who will retire in December, urged the group to focus on system optimization — improving how current programs and systems work before adding new initiatives. "If things would just work better than they are now, we would be so much further along," Bruce said.
A procedural motion to approve the minutes from the council's Aug. 1 meeting was moved by Councilwoman Allman and approved without recorded opposition. No other formal votes or ordinance actions took place during the workshop; staff described the session as a working exercise to generate priorities, assign accountable leads and develop metrics.
Staff told members the next steps: JRAC staff will group the posted priorities into buckets, identify proposed lead entities (existing work groups, subcommittees or county offices), return in December with draft metrics and accountable leads, and present a final plan for member review in February. Staff will also continue off‑line engagement with the steering committee and subcommittees to prepare the draft metrics.
The workshop discussion surfaced operational clarifications: attendees noted that automatic expungements handled by the Administrative Office of the Courts do not automatically result in notifications to municipal or county record keepers (law enforcement, jail management systems), creating potential outstanding arrest orders or data inconsistencies; members asked staff to explore process fixes for cross‑system communication. Attendees also discussed the driver's‑license restoration work JRAC partnered on previously and the practical barriers people face when judgments and unpaid fines already exist.
The council's facilitators stressed the practical constraints: JRAC members were asked to identify priorities that felt feasible and to propose a clear accountable lead for each priority so progress can be measured over the two‑year window.
