What's Happening in Pretrial Justice? July 2025

Chicago Serves Up Deep Dish Data: Cook County (Illinois) has unveiled its criminal justice data dashboard, providing information on issues such as arrests by police, most frequent charges filed, jail populations, and types of pretrial release. The dashboard is the result of a collaborative effort between justice system agencies in Cook County, Loyola University’s Center for Criminal Justice Research, Measures for Justice and others.

Let the Sun Shine In: A new report from The Marshall Project documents a particular issue in jail conditions: lack of sunlight. While access to fresh air and sunlight is often mandated by jail policy or state or federal law, that access has been limited by design flaws, understaffing, and a lack of consequences for failing to meet that standard. Lack of access to sun is linked to medical issues such as high blood pressure, risk of diabetes, depression and sleep disorders.

Sedgwick County, Kansas Dives Into the Numbers: A new report from the ACLU of Kansas takes a hard look at pretrial practices in the county, home to the state capital of Wichita. Data from December 2023 to December 2024 shows that Black people are overrepresented in the county jail, making up 32% of the jail population compared to only 9% of the general population. The vast majority of charges (84%) were for non-violent offenses. The average total bond amount was $104,290 for a person in jail, when the median per capita earnings in the county is less than $37,000. We love a hyper-local look at justice, and hope Sedgwick County uses this data to change its pretrial practices.

Federal Legislation Would Address Information Gap in Gun Purchases: The Preventing Pretrial Gun Purchases Act, introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Congressman Dan Goldman (D-NY), seeks to close a loophole in the current background check system by including information on those people who are barred from making gun purchases as a condition of pretrial release. The bill includes $25 million to states to provide timely and accurate reporting of pretrial gun-related orders. (How about improvements on pretrial data collection in general?)

Stakeholder collaboration in action: cross-agency teamwork drives bail reform in Harris County.

Kudos to Harris County: In 2019, Harris County stopped using a cash bail schedule for misdemeanors as a result of litigation in O'Donnell V. Harris County. A new report from Duke Law School documents how pretrial practice and outcomes have changed from 2015 to 2024. Namely, the number of misdemeanor arrestees has declined by almost 14%; the percentage of people required to post cash bond has fallen from 85% to 14%; the percentage of people jailed pretrial has fallen from 60% to 10%. Also, in 2023, 74% of cases were dismissed, compared to 31% in 2015.

The Pretrial Covid Experiment: Researchers looked at the impact of pandemic-era administrative orders to reduce bond amounts for eligible felony charges in Palm Beach County, Florida, and found that bond reductions were linked to an increased likelihood of pretrial release and decreases in custody length, with no negative impacts on pretrial compliance, such as failure to appear and new arrests.

Fines and Fees are a Failure: The Fines and Fees Justice Center has issued a first-of-its-kind report, looking at the amount of fines and fees imposed by criminal, juvenile, municipal and traffic courts nationwide. From 2018 to 2022, nearly $14 billion in fines and fees were imposed in 24 states, and in spite of a decline in court cases, the amount of fines and fees increased by 3 percent in that time period. Thirteen states issued over 2.5 million bench warrants for failing to pay court debt or appear in court during that time. Moreover, many governments and courts fail to collect and report on data on the impact of this money-seeking behemoth and collection rates are shaky. FFJC calls for the end of fines and fees as a revenue-generating mechanism, calling it “bad for people, bad for budgets”.

Kentucky Okays Multiple FTAs for a Single Missed Day in Court: The Supreme Court of Kentucky has ruled that a person who fails to appear (FTA) in court when charged with multiple felony counts can be charged with FTA multiple times without violating the double jeopardy clause. Double jeopardy forbids the prosecution of a person more than once for the same offense. The Court reasoned that because the state bail jumping statute criminalizes FTA in connection with a specific underlying charge, multiple charges of FTA are acceptable. We don’t love it - the point is to get people to court, and uh, there was no actual flight from justice? A dissenting opinion points out that rulings from Florida, Oklahoma and Washington DC forbid multiple convictions of bail jumping for a single missed court date.

A Declaration for Community-Led Safety

PJI proudly joined Congresswoman Summer Lee, fellow Members of Congress, and over 100 advocacy organizations at the July 2025 press conference launching the Community Safety Working Agenda. Representing PJI, Dr. Kevin Beckford delivered remarks underscoring the organization’s commitment to ending pretrial incarceration and building community-based alternatives to punishment and policing.

PJI endorsed all three bills at the heart of the Agenda: the People’s Response Act, the Mental Health Justice Act, and the Break the Cycle of Violence Act. Dr. Beckford emphasized that real safety comes not from jails or police, but from housing, healing, and investment in people before a crisis. In his words, “These bills aren’t just policy proposals; they are a declaration that we believe in the genius, the strength, and the sovereignty of our people.”