A few years ago a small group of criminal justice planners in Jefferson County, Colorado noticed the jail seemed to be overflowing with individuals waiting for their case to be heard in court. They decided to start collecting and look at the data to find out how many people actually were in pretrial status and what was keeping them in. What they found after a six-month examination of the jail surprised even them.
Their jail was about 42% pretrial defendants, but that’s not the part that surprised them. What surprised them was why they defendants incarcerated. If a bond amount was set at $200 or less, 28% of defendants did not post. If the bond amount was between $201 and $750, 41% of defendants did not post and when they did post if took on average 6-7 days. Finally, they looked at everything $750 or higher and found that two-thirds of defendants remained in jail and did not come up with the funds to post their bond. The small percentage of individuals that did post a bond of over $750 took 9-10 days to do so.
Among those who did get out of jail, court appearance and public safety was the same no matter the bond amount. These numbers demonstrated the antiquated secured money bail practices in their criminal justice system. Since discovering these findings, they have worked hard to remedy the situation. In the past few months, nine counties in Colorado have begun to implement a validated pretrial risk assessment CPAT.
NEW Federal judge Lee Rosenthal issued final approval of the settlement agreement and consent decree in the case of ODonnell v. Harris County (Texas). The agreement is expected to result in the prompt pretrial release of 90-95% of people charged with misdemeanors. Under the requirements of the consent decree, the county must provide social workers and investigators to assist lawyers at bail hearings, and judges must implement uniform court appearance policies, waive most court appearances upon request, and implement transparent and straightforward rescheduling and warrant recall processes.
Alaska has rolled back many pretrial justice reforms through HB 49. Failures to appear have become misdemeanors or felonies, depending on the underlying charge, instead of violations. The types of charges for which people can be held for up to 48 hours to allow prosecutors to demonstrate risk of flight or danger to the community has been expanded. The previous law, which took effect in 2016 under SB 91, contained requirements for the court to release people on recognizance or unsecured bonds based on results from pretrial assessment tools conducted by pretrial services officers; the new law says the results from a pretrial assessment tool “shall” be a factor that the court considers, but they are not determinative. The new law also encourages “the use of contemporaneous two-way video conference for pretrial hearings whenever possible,” and adds language that a person may request a bail review hearing based on inability to pay only if the person can show that they made a good faith effort to post required bail. Prior to repeal, the pretrial reforms enacted under.
Alaska has rolled back many pretrial justice reforms through HB 49. Failures to appear have become misdemeanors or felonies, depending on the underlying charge, instead of violations. The types of charges for which people can be held for up to 48 hours to allow prosecutors to demonstrate risk of flight or danger to the community has been expanded. The previous law, which took effect in 2016 under SB 91, contained requirements for the court to release people on recognizance or unsecured bonds based on results from pretrial assessment tools conducted by pretrial services officers; the new law says the results from a pretrial assessment tool “shall” be a factor that the court considers, but they are not determinative. The new law also encourages “the use of contemporaneous two-way video conference for pretrial hearings whenever possible,” and adds language that a person may request a bail review hearing based on inability to pay only if the person can show that they made a good faith effort to post required bail. Prior to repeal, the pretrial reforms enacted under
Alaska has rolled back many pretrial justice reforms through HB 49. Failures to appear have become misdemeanors or felonies, depending on the underlying charge, instead of violations. The types of charges for which people can be held for up to 48 hours to allow prosecutors to demonstrate risk of flight or danger to the community has been expanded. The previous law, which took effect in 2016 under SB 91, contained requirements for the court to release people on recognizance or unsecured bonds based on results from pretrial assessment tools conducted by pretrial services officers; the new law says the results from a pretrial assessment tool “shall” be a factor that the court considers, but they are not determinative. The new law also encourages “the use of contemporaneous two-way video conference for pretrial hearings whenever possible,” and adds language that a person may request a bail review hearing based on inability to pay only if the person can show that they made a good faith effort to post required bail. Prior to repeal, the pretrial reforms enacted under
Alaska has rolled back many pretrial justice reforms through HB 49. Failures to appear have become misdemeanors or felonies, depending on the underlying charge, instead of violations. The types of charges for which people can be held for up to 48 hours to allow prosecutors to demonstrate risk of flight or danger to the community has been expanded. The previous law, which took effect in 2016 under SB 91, contained requirements for the court to release people on recognizance or unsecured bonds based on results from pretrial assessment tools conducted by pretrial services officers; the new law says the results from a pretrial assessment tool “shall” be a factor that the court considers, but they are not determinative. The new law also encourages “the use of contemporaneous two-way video conference for pretrial hearings whenever possible,” and adds language that a person may request a bail review hearing based on inability to pay only if the person can show that they made a good faith effort to post required bail. Prior to repeal, the pretrial reforms enacted under
Alaska has rolled back many pretrial justice reforms through HB 49. Failures to appear have become misdemeanors or felonies, depending on the underlying charge, instead of violations. The types of charges for which people can be held for up to 48 hours to allow prosecutors to demonstrate risk of flight or danger to the community has been expanded. The previous law, which took effect in 2016 under SB 91, contained requirements for the court to release people on recognizance or unsecured bonds based on results from pretrial assessment tools conducted by pretrial services officers; the new law says the results from a pretrial assessment tool “shall” be a factor that the court considers, but they are not determinative. The new law also encourages “the use of contemporaneous two-way video conference for pretrial hearings whenever possible,” and adds language that a person may request a bail review hearing based on inability to pay only if the person can show that they made a good faith effort to post required bail. Prior to repeal, the pretrial reforms enacted under
Alaska has rolled back many pretrial justice reforms through HB 49. Failures to appear have become misdemeanors or felonies, depending on the underlying charge, instead of violations. The types of charges for which people can be held for up to 48 hours to allow prosecutors to demonstrate risk of flight or danger to the community has been expanded. The previous law, which took effect in 2016 under SB 91, contained requirements for the court to release people on recognizance or unsecured bonds based on results from pretrial assessment tools conducted by pretrial services officers; the new law says the results from a pretrial assessment tool “shall” be a factor that the court considers, but they are not determinative. The new law also encourages “the use of contemporaneous two-way video conference for pretrial hearings whenever possible,” and adds language that a person may request a bail review hearing based on inability to pay only if the person can show that they made a good faith effort to post required bail. Prior to repeal, the pretrial reforms enacted under