Our Projects

National Advocacy and Technical Assistance Work

Strengthing Local Criminal Justice Systems with Proven Strategies

Pretrial Justice and Jail Management: Guiding County Officials

A Scan of Pretrial Practice in America

Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program

Pretrial Technical Assistance, Training, and Assessment Project

Working Directly With Communities

Los Angeles County, California

King County, Washington

Milwaukee County, Wisconsin

 

National Advocacy and Technical Assistance Work

Strengthening Local Criminal Justice Systems with Proven Strategies. The Pretrial Justice Institute is partnering with the Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP), the Justice Management Institute (JMI), and The Carey Group (TCG), to equip criminal justice policymakers in local communities with information, processes and tools based on two decades of research on the factors that contribute to repeat offenses. The project also will teach effective strategies to interrupt the cycle of crime. The goal of the project, entitled "Evidence Based Decision Making for Local Criminal Justice Systems," is to reduce pretrial misconduct and post-conviction repeat offenses by developing a model for more evidence-based decision-making in local criminal justice systems. For more information, please contact Cherise Fanno Burdeen at Ask a Question. 

Pretrial Justice and Jail Management: Guiding County Officials. The Pretrial Justice Institute (PJI), in partnership with the National Association of Counties Research Foundation (NACoRF), will provide education, guidance and technical assistance on effective pretrial services to elected county officials across the nation.  Because of jail crowding, there has been an unprecedented construction boom for jail facilities – placing increased burdens on counties that are responsible for jail construction and operation. PJI will help county officials find less costly alternatives to building jails. National data show that nearly two-thirds of the country’s jail inmates are incarcerated pending trial, which means that effective pretrial services programs are likely to reduce jail crowding significantly.  In the first stage of this project, PJI has developed a succinct Guide written specifically for elected officials, which PJI will mail to more than 3,000 counties and post online.  In the second stage, PJI will conduct follow-up technical assistance that will improve local correctional decision-making on pretrial justice and jail management.  For local assistance, elected county officials should contact Cherise Fanno Burdeen or Timothy Murray at Ask a Question.

A Scan of Pretrial Justice in America. Since 1979, the Pretrial Justice Institute (PJI) has conducted surveys once a decade of known pretrial services agencies.  The 2009 survey is being funded by the JEHT Foundation.  In a supplemental project funded through the Bureau of Justice Assistance, PJI will produce an analysis of the survey’s findings about known pretrial programs. This analysis will include, for the first time, an examination of changes in the pretrial services field over all four decades. It will also conduct an unprecedented nationwide scan of practice at the pretrial stage. PJI will locate and document the status of pretrial services within justice systems, assessing whether they are housed within probation administrators, court administrators, sheriffs’ offices, or other entities. More than 300 pretrial services agencies are currently known, but they represent less than 10 percent of the more than 3,000 counties in this country.  Identification of the remaining 90 percent of pretrial policies and systems is the first step toward providing government and private support for pretrial justice services for every accused person in the country. To register your county’s point of contact for the nationwide scan, please email us at Ask a Question.

Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program. The Pretrial Justice Institute (PJI) will provide technical assistance on pretrial services for the mentally ill as part of a consortium of service providers that are seeking to address the planning and capacity-building needs of pretrial services programs. In addition to PJI, the consortium includes the Council of State Governments Justice Center (CSG) and the National Association of Counties (NACo). The project will involve a national training event, distance-learning seminars on relevant topics and state-based targeted technical assistance.  For more information, please contact John Clark at Ask a Question.

Pretrial Technical Assistance, Training, and Assessment Project. The pretrial release decision involves and impacts virtually every criminal justice system actor.  Accordingly, PJI has taken a multi-faceted approach.  The work proposed will reach pretrial practitioners, judges, prosecutors, defenders, corrections officials, and county governments with training and technical assistance tailored to their needs.  Criminal justice systems must become invested in safer, more transparent, and less racially biased alternatives.  This can be accomplished through collaborative program development utilizing evidenced based practices such as risk assessment instruments, cross-disciplinary training, and the creation of consistent and clear outcome measures within the confines of local law.

PJI, in partnership with JFA Institute (Dr. James Austin) and NAPSA, is pleased to announce the start of a new project for Pretrial Training and Assessment. The goal of this project is to raise state and local pretrial justice policies and practices to an evidence-based platform aligned with the national standards.  This goal will be met by the following activities:

• Provide training and technical assistance on bail issues and pretrial release;
• Identification of research findings and lessons learned regarding effective pretrial risk assessment processes;
• Develop pretrial services online resources center; and,
• Provide Corrections Options Technical Assistance in partnership with JFA.

Working Directly With Communities

Los Angeles County California. PJI was hired to conduct comprehensive assessments of the Division’s Bail Deviation (BD) and Own Recognizance (OR) programs. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of over 80,000 cases processed through the BD program and nearly 140,000 cases going through the OR program, compared the operations of those programs to national standards and issued a series of recommendations. A number of those recommendations, including improvements to pretrial risk assessment procedures and pursuing the implementation of a supervision program for defendants released with non-financial conditions of release, have been implemented. As a result of this project, significant improvements are being made to the pretrial services program that serves the nation’s largest population.

King County Washington. PJI recently completed a project in King County, Washington to assist local officials in preparing for the implementation of a research-based pretrial risk assessment instrument.  The tool would be used by the jail’s Intake Services Unit, which interviews defendants after arrest and submit reports, currently with no recommendations, to the court at the initial appearance.  PJI led key system stakeholders through discussions of the benefits of and concerns about a pretrial risk assessment tool, presented officials with options regarding the implementation of such a tool, and developed a plan for conducting a risk assessment study.

Milwaukee County Wisconsin. PJI is conducting a jail population analysis for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.  The project is looking at trend data in crime, arrests, case filings and jail populations from 2003 through 2008.  It is also analyzing data on about 45,000 inmates booked into the Milwaukee County jail system during 2008.  A final report will target opportunities for effectively managing limited jail bed space without compromising public safety.