Universal Screening

The ABA standards recommend that pretrial services programs should conduct an investigation and provide the court with information in “all cases in which the defendant is in custody and charged with a criminal offense” (Standard 10-4.2(a)).  This standard recognizes that, even when it is unlikely that the defendant will be released on non-financial conditions or when the defendant cannot be released immediately because of a hold relating to another charge, the judicial officer still must make some release or detention decision.  Furthermore, information from the pretrial services program can be most important in the more difficult or complicated cases. 

Survey of Pretrial Programs Series:  Screening

PJI has recently released the fourth national survey of pretrial services programs. Previous surveys were conducted in 1979, 1989, and 2001.

Listed below are the findings relating to the screening of defendants.

Seventy-six percent of programs report that at least one category of defendant is automatically excluded from interview and investigation in 2008 —slightly down from 84 percent in the 2001 survey.  In the 1989 survey, 78 percent of respondents reported having at least one exclusion, as did 70 percent of those participating in the 1979 survey. 

The most likely reasons for exclusion are when there is a hold from another jurisdiction (43 percent) and when defendants are charged with offenses that are not bailable by statute (35 percent).   

This section contains the chapters of each set of standards related to this topic, examples submitted by programs, related publications and results from PJI’s Survey of Pretrial Programs series.