Issue: Jail Overview

Implementation Guide

Data Analysis Interagency Collaboration Prosecutors October 24, 2019

Working Toward Safety and Justice Through Police and Prosecutor Partnerships

Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and the International Association of Chiefs of Police

APA is one of the strategic allies supporting the Safety + Justice Challenge through its Exploring Innovations with APA project. APA will provide technical assistance and resources to the 9 core sites to assist them with implementing and sustaining their evidence-based programs. The core sites, partner sites, and strategic allies will participate in two Leadership Institutes hosted by APA where the sites and allies will learn from each other and successful peers in the field about how to overcome the challenges of ensuring the safety of the community is met using means that offer justice to the system participants and the community. APA is producing a white paper and several newsletters, which will highlight some of those innovative diversion and alternative sentencing methods, as well as some of the structural and cultural realities of implementing these programs.

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Report

Interagency Collaboration Policing Pretrial and Bail August 13, 2019

Gatekeepers: The Role of Police in Ending Mass Incarceration

Vera Institute of Justice

Police in America arrest millions of people each year, and the likelihood that arrest will lead to jail incarceration has increased steadily: for every 100 arrests police officers made in 2016, there were 99 jail admissions, up from 70 jail admissions for every 100 arrests in 1994. Ending mass incarceration and repairing its extensive collateral consequences thus must begin by focusing on the front end of the system: police work. Recognizing the roughly 18,000 police agencies around the country as gatekeepers of the system, this report explores the factors driving mass enforcement, particularly of low-level offenses; what police agencies could do instead with the right community investment, national and local leadership, and officer training, incentives, and support; and policies that could shift the policing paradigm away from the reflexive use of enforcement, which unnecessarily criminalizes people and leads directly to the jailhouse door.

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Issue Brief

Data Analysis Human Toll of Jail Pretrial and Bail April 23, 2019

Justice Denied: The Harmful and Lasting Effects of Pretrial Detention

Vera Institute of Justice

The pretrial population—the number of people who are detained while awaiting trial—increased 433 percent between 1970 and 2015. This growth is in large part due to the increased use of monetary bail. But pretrial detention has far-reaching negative consequences. This evidence brief presents information on the way that pretrial detention is currently used and summarizes research on its impacts. These studies call into question whether pretrial detention improves court appearance rates, suggests that people who are detained are more likely to be convicted and to receive harsher sentences, and indicate that even short periods of detention may make people more likely to become involved with the criminal justice system again in the future. The brief concludes by highlighting strategies that some jurisdictions have employed to reduce the use of monetary bail and increase pretrial release.

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Report

Data Analysis Jail Populations Pretrial and Bail March 19, 2019

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019

Prison Policy Initiative

The country’s fragmented systems of confinement make answering basic questions about mass incarceration unnecessarily difficult. This updated edition of Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, answers these essential questions with the most recent data, highlighting causes of incarceration that get too little attention as well as incarceration “myths” that receive too much.

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Issue Brief

Courts Pretrial and Bail Prosecutors February 22, 2019

Pretrial Risk Assessment Tools: A Primer for Judges, Prosecutors, and Defense Attorneys

University of Virginia Law School, Upturn, and Human Rights Data Analysis Group

A vibrant national debate is occurring as to what role, if any, pretrial risk assessment tools can or should play in bail reform. This critical issue brief is intended to inform this ongoing debate by describing pretrial risk assessment tools and what they are designed to do. The primer provides foundational knowledge about pretrial risk assessment tools to contextualize and support further discussion regarding the use and evaluation of these tools in practice.

Additional Downloads

• Executive Summary

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