What's Happening in Pretrial Justice? October 2025

Racial disparities persist in Massachusetts. A new report from the Harvard Kennedy School finds that white people have been nearly the sole beneficiaries of Massachusetts’ 2017 pretrial reforms that require judges to consider a person’s financial resources when setting bond amounts. While the percentage of white people held in pretrial detention fell by an astonishing 40%, the percentage of Black people fell by 3.1%.

Do NYC Judges follow assessment recommendations? No. But are they consistent across races? Also no. The Data Collaborative for Justice finds that from 2021-2023, the Pretrial Release Assessment recommended releasing people on their own recognizance 88% of the time, and that this result was consistent across race/ethnicity. However, judges only followed the ROR recommendations 30% of the time in violent felony cases and about half the time (51%) in nonviolent felony cases. In violent felony cases, judges were least likely to set ROR for Black people (26%), more often for Hispanic people (32%) and most often for white people (43%). To learn more, go to the study here.

Long-term follow-up study on the impact of eliminating bail. Another study from the Data Collaborative for Justice followed two sets of people for 50 months: one group subject to bail or remand under pre-reform laws and one group released under the elimination of money bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. In New York City, people released under the reforms had significantly lower rates of re-arrest for all subcategories of charges. Statewide, for those with no recent criminal history and no recent prior felony arrests, eliminating money bail produced reductions in both rates of re-arrest and average numbers of re-arrest.

Legislation by tragedy in North Carolina. A month after a Ukrainian woman was fatally stabbed by a man diagnosed with schizophrenia and with a long history of interactions with the police, state legislators introduced “Iryna’s Law,” which eliminates release on recognizance and expands the category of charges with a rebuttable presumption against pretrial release; a last-minute amendment also reinvigorates the use of the death penalty, which was under a de facto moratorium. The bill quickly passed both houses and was signed by the governor. While the law does allocate funds for a study on the intersection of mental health and the criminal legal system, it does not directly fund any mental health programs.

Calculator brings shape to ability to pay. Fines and fees keep many people in the legal system much longer when they cannot pay their court debt. Charging court debt according to what a person is able to pay is understood well in concept, but hard to execute in reality. There is little guidance on what courts should look at, and the process of gathering and reviewing bills and income is difficult under the best of circumstances. Enter the National Ability to Pay Calculator, developed by Alex Kornya, a legal services attorney. The calculator uses the Internal Revenue Services’ collection of financial standards and federal data to determine what a person is able to pay by standardizing costs of housing, food, medicine, transportation, and other basic necessities and factoring in local cost-of-living.

We're really getting around!

Working with our partners at NYU School of Law and Bronx Defenders, PJI has produced a new report on safe and effective alternatives to jail in New York City. A City Without Cages: Creating Pretrial Safety and Liberty is written for a broad audience to introduce basic concepts around pretrial programs and incorporates comments and viewpoints from people with direct knowledge of the system. PJI Executive Director Guisela Marroquín spoke about the report on the civil liberties radio program Law and Disorder, which is broadcast on more than 150 radio stations and Apple podcasts.

Listen Now!

Kevin Beckford and Wendy Shang attended the Strengthening Justice Summit in Richmond, Virginia earlier this month. Sponsored by the Legal Aid Justice Center, The Commonwealth Institute, New Virginia Majority, the Fines and Fees Justice Center and Arnold Ventures, the two-day summit focused on pretrial issues specific to the commonwealth, including court appearance (Wendy was a panelist!), counsel at first appearance, and court debt.