What's Happening in Pretrial Justice? September 2025

We Love a Mic Drop! PJI Board Member and Policy Director of the Colorado Freedom Fund Rebecca Wallace penned a devastating response to the current threat to no-cash bail in The Denver Post. After reminding readers that the only beneficiaries of a cash bail system are the commercial bail bond industry and Wall Street insurance companies, Wallace concludes, “We can choose to fundamentally reorient away from jailing people for poverty, have fewer people incarcerated, and instead spend our resources building toward true community safety.”

But Wait, There’s More! The military takeover of the District of Columbia is not just costing over $1 million a day, depressing local businesses, and angering residents, it’s also overwhelming the courts and local jails. The local superior court is operating with 13 judicial vacancies (which the president is charged with filling), and the federal district court is seeing as many new people each day as it used to see in a week. While the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District traditionally abided by the law that people must have an initial appearance within 48 hours, the recent uptick in arrests–often for nonviolent offenses–have resulted in nearly a dozen people spending several days in jail. At least four of these people had their charges either downgraded or dismissed.

Art that Moves (and Educates) Us. An undergraduate course on public health disparities found that the use of the documentary Time: The Kalief Browder Story was an effective tool in developing students’ legal-public health literacy, their recognition of intersecting structural inequities and ability to propose policy-level interventions. According to the study, this media-based learning resulted in 88 percent of students effectively incorporating structural determinants such as racial inequity, economic disadvantage, and systemic bias into their analyses. As of this writing, the 6-part documentary can be seen on Netflix.

Cash Bail Doesn’t Make Us Safe. The new explainer from our friends at The Bail Project lays out why cash bail does not make communities safer. This short, smart document shares the research on why cash bail actually creates more harm than good. Want an even shorter version? Check out their New York Times op-ed! Share with your elected officials and citizen groups!

Feds Failing at Right to Counsel. A new law review article from the University of Chicago shows that rates of pretrial detention in the federal system are climbing upwards while the system is failing to fulfill its duty to provide counsel at first appearance. According to Professor Alison Siegler and Jaden Lessnick, in 2024, the rate of pretrial detention was 72%, a three-fold increase from when the Bail Reform Act of 1984 was enacted. According to their findings, thirty of the 94 federal courts fail to provide counsel at initial appearance hearings.

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