Pretrial Justice Collaborative

Project

Overview

Project Overview

Jurisdictions across the United States are taking steps to reduce the number of people who are detained in jail unnecessarily while awaiting trial. In particular, they are seeking to reduce the use of cash bail as a mechanism to ensure court appearance. Many jurisdictions have introduced risk-assessment tools to inform release decisions and pretrial supervision programs to maintain court appearance rates. These reforms have the potential to reduce racial disparities, increase fairness, and reduce the role of the criminal justice system in perpetuating poverty in low-income communities. However, many of the jurisdictions that are instituting these reforms are “flying blind” because there is very little reliable evidence on their effectiveness, and these reforms may come with their own potential pitfalls that are not well understood.

A diverse group of eight jurisdictions from across the United States have teamed up with MDRC’s Center for Criminal Justice Research and Justice System Partners (JSP) to form the Pretrial Justice Collaborative. The goal of the Collaborative is to build and disseminate reliable, usable evidence about the most effective strategies for reducing pretrial detention, minimizing conditions of supervision while cases are adjudicated, and reducing racial and economic disparities, while maintaining court appearance rates and public safety.

The MDRC-JSP team will start by working with each jurisdiction to analyze its existing pretrial practices, conducting a process study and an analysis of outcomes such as arrests, release conditions, court appearance rates, and new criminal charges overall and for subpopulations of interest. A subset of the jurisdictions will advance to a second tier of research that includes rigorous impact studies comparing the efficacy of specific pretrial supervision approaches, with a focus on court appearance rates.

STATUS: Current

Basics

Issue: Criminal and Juvenile Justice

Focus Area: Pretrial Justice, Corrections and Reentry, Youth and Juvenile Justice

Population: Populations with Barriers to Employment, Young Adults

Focus Population: Former Prisoners, Young People in Foster Care, Young People at Risk of Criminal Justice Involvement, People Involved in the Criminal Justice System

Locations: California, Colorado, New York, Ohio, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin

Agenda, Scope, <br> & Goals

Agenda, Scope, and Goals

The eight partnering jurisdictions in this study have implemented a range of reforms to their pretrial justice systems, including creating or enhancing pretrial supervision programs and intervention strategies to maintain court appearance rates. The goals of this study are to help partner jurisdictions assess the performance of their pretrial release interventions, with a focus on court appearance outcomes, and to identify the least burdensome pretrial supervision interventions necessary to maximize court appearance rates.

The Pretrial Justice Collaborative project will conduct process and descriptive outcome studies for each of the jurisdictions, seeking to address the following research questions:

What are the jurisdiction’s practices and policies related to pretrial release conditions and intervention strategies? How is pretrial supervision implemented?
What are the trends in court appearance rates for defendants assigned to various release conditions and interventions?

In a subset of the jurisdictions, the project will conduct impact studies comparing the efficacy of specific pretrial supervision approaches, seeking to address the following research question:

Is a particular pretrial supervision intervention as effective as a more restrictive intervention with respect to court appearance rates, case outcomes, new criminal charges, and other outcomes?

STATUS: Current

Basics

Issue: Criminal and Juvenile Justice

Focus Area: Pretrial Justice, Corrections and Reentry, Youth and Juvenile Justice

Population: Populations with Barriers to Employment, Young Adults

Focus Population: Former Prisoners, Young People in Foster Care, Young People at Risk of Criminal Justice Involvement, People Involved in the Criminal Justice System

Locations: California, Colorado, New York, Ohio, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin

Design, Sites, & <br> Data Sources

Design, Sites, and Data Sources

The participating jurisdictions are: Dane County, WI; the City and County of Denver and Mesa, CO; Harris County, TX; Lucas County, OH; New York, NY; Santa Cruz County, CA; and Yakima County, WA.

The Pretrial Justice Collaborative will have two tiers of research activities:

Tier 1. In each of the eight jurisdictions, the MDRC-JSP team will conduct a process and descriptive outcome study of the existing pretrial practices and procedures for setting pretrial release conditions, and will analyze recent trends in court appearance rates and other case outcomes overall and for subpopulations of interest. The study will use qualitative and quantitative data sources to answer important questions to inform the jurisdictions and broader policy. Data will be gathered through interviews with court staff members and other stakeholders and through criminal justice administrative records from state or local courts and local jails. The Tier 1 research will also help determine which jurisdictions will move into a second tier of research, which includes an impact evaluation of pretrial interventions.

Tier 2. In a subset of the eight jurisdictions, the MDRC-JSP team will conduct rigorous impact studies comparing the efficacy of specific pretrial supervision approaches, with a focus on what works to improve court appearance rates. The MDRC-JSP team will provide frequent short-term responses to jurisdictions on important outcomes achieved throughout the study period. Ultimately the team will analyze the relative impact of various supervision strategies on court appearance rates, compliance with the terms of pretrial supervision, pretrial detention, case dispositions, new criminal charges, and racial disparities. This analysis will use criminal justice administrative records from each of the jurisdictions. The research will result in policy evidence about whether less restrictive pretrial supervision interventions are as effective as more burdensome interventions at maintaining court appearance rates for different types of defendants.

STATUS: Current

Basics

Issue: Criminal and Juvenile Justice

Focus Area: Pretrial Justice, Corrections and Reentry, Youth and Juvenile Justice

Population: Populations with Barriers to Employment, Young Adults

Focus Population: Former Prisoners, Young People in Foster Care, Young People at Risk of Criminal Justice Involvement, People Involved in the Criminal Justice System

Locations: California, Colorado, New York, Ohio, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin

Funders & <br />Partners

Funders

Arnold Ventures

Partners

Justice System Partners

MDRC Staff

Kristin Porter
Deputy Director, MDRC Center for Data Insights
Porter, deputy director of MDRC Center for Data Insights, is a statistician with expertise in predictive analytics, causal inference, and statistical computing.
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Bret Barden
Research Associate, Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment Policy Area
Barden’s research focuses on employment and training, income support, criminal justice, disability, and hard-to-serve populations.
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Melanie Skemer
Research Associate, Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment Policy Area
Skemer’s research focuses on evaluations of criminal justice policies, systems, and reforms. She also studies new system approaches in child support enforcement.
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Chloe Anderson Golub
Consultant, Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment Policy Area
Anderson’s research focuses on evaluations of criminal justice practices, reforms, and systems, as well as employment and training programs and youth development programs. Currently, she manages the Pretrial Justice Collaborative project, a study of pretrial supervision techniques and court appearance rates in eight jurisdictions across the country.
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Brit Henderson
Research Analyst, Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment Policy Area
Henderson’s research focuses on evaluations of criminal justice policies, programs, and systems as well as employment and training, noncustodial parent, and youth development programs.
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Viktoriya Syrov
Research Analyst, Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment Policy Area
Syrov serves as a resource manager and research analyst in the Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment policy area. In this role, she supports project directors and task leaders with project management by developing and maintaining budgets and staffing plans. She also acts as a liaison to consultants, subcontractors, and funding agencies.
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Lily Freedman
Research Analyst, Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment Policy Area
At MDRC, Freedman’s research has focused on programs for disadvantaged young people, individuals involved with the criminal justice system, and other populations with barriers to employment.
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Emily Brennan
Research Analyst, Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment Policy Area
At MDRC, Brennan’s research focuses on programs for disadvantaged young people, individuals involved with the criminal justice system, and other populations with barriers to employment.
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Project

STATUS: Current

Basics

STATUS: Current

Basics

STATUS: Current

Basics