Community

The public is safer, at less cost, when effective pretrial services are in place. In many communities, public safety expenditures consume more than 60 percent of local tax revenue.  When individuals who could successfully be supervised in the community are detained in jail pending trial, it wastes local resources. When potentially dangerous people are released into the community without adequate risk assessment, it increases the danger to the community.  Effective pretrial service programs use validated risk assessment tools that are specific to their community, giving judges much better information about who is safe to release and who should be detained.