Topic: Courts

More Results

Since joining the Safety and Justice Challenge, the jail population in Palm Beach County has been significantly reduced while keeping the community safe.

The county’s PalmFUSE program has demonstrated that housing frequent utilizers and providing them with wraparound services creates stability and ensures that people with behavioral health issues do not cycle in and out of jail. Launched as a pilot, the initial PalmFUSE project provided housing and case management for 12 unhoused individuals with behavioral health issues who were frequently arrested and cycled in and out of jail. Before the program, the 12 participants had been arrested 64 times collectively in the two years before they were housed. The pilot was completed in 2020. All participants have remained in housing, and no one has been rearrested since joining the program. A new contract has been signed to expand the program to 25 participants in 2021.

The county’s text message court date reminder system has successfully reduced the number of warrants issued for failure to appear by 62% for Public Defender clients, as of December 2020.

Initial Case Conference (ICC) hearings are designed to decrease the average length of stay for incarcerated individuals charged with second- and third-degree felonies. COVID-19 has unfortunately affected the program by increasing length of stay. Further research is being conducted to measure the program’s impact as court schedules return to normal.

There is productive collaboration among key stakeholders, including judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, public defenders, and community members, which has contributed to the progress to achieve a more fair and equitable use of jails.

Remaining Challenges

Palm Beach County is focused on addressing its remaining challenges in its local justice system.

The major challenge the county faces is significantly reducing racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. The county is doubling down on the work to address disparities moving forward.

A second challenge is to examine changes the county has made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to determine if they are effective and should be continued after the pandemic has subsided. These changes include amending the administrative bond schedule and scheduling bond hearings more quickly.

More Results

By implementing pretrial strategies, Pennington County has reduced the number of bookings for non-violent, low-level offenses by 76% between January 2018 and January 2021. Racial and ethnic disparities in the jail population have decreased as well. During that same timeframe, Pennington County saw a 22% reduction in Native Americans referred to the jail.

Between the first meeting in March 2018 through January 2021, the Jail Population Review Team has been able to look more closely at 1,225 individuals to determine if they would be able to be safely released from jail. As a result, 25% of people in jail were both recommended and approved for release, meaning that people spent over 5,196 days at home with their families, instead of in jail.

The Court Notifications program has delivered 66,770 reminders to people awaiting their court hearings between January 2019 and January 2021. Although the data is not yet available to directly connect the messages with court appearance, participant responses show that the reminders are extremely helpful, not only helping people remember court dates but also answering their questions and helping them find services.

Since its launch in August 2018, 425 people have been referred to the Community Work Program as an alternative to jail. Instead of remaining in the jail and away from their families and communities, they completed more than 7,000 hours of community service.

The Care Campus and Safe Solutions program made significant progress in keeping people struggling with substance use from entering or going further into the justice system. Since its opening in September 2018, the Care Campus has had 54,563 admissions of people with substance use disorders. Of these, 70% were admissions into Safe Solutions.

Beyond the statistics, these and other programs supported by the Safety and Justice Challenge have touched the lives of people in Pennington County. For example, a 28-year-old single mother contacted the 1-800 warrant resolution number—one of the strategies the county is advancing as part of local justice reform. She shared that she had two non-violent, low-level warrants. She had been offered a job within her community as a case worker but could not be officially offered the job with her active warrants. After being easily connected to the Safety and Justice Challenge Attorney Liaison, she provided the required documents, her warrants were cleared, her cases were dismissed, and she was able to accept the job.

Remaining Challenges

Pennington County continues to experience a high number of people awaiting trial within the jail. In order to respond, the Pretrial Monitoring Program began as a pilot in 2020. Program staff helps individuals waiting for case disposition to make sure they attend their next hearing without further contact with law enforcement. The county is seeking ways to grow more opportunities to release people before their trial begins.

Pennington County also continues to work to address racial and ethnic disparities in their local justice system, particularly the over-representation of Native Americans in the jail. The county continues to conduct tribal outreach and engagement on reservations and with Pennington County communities with the goal of reducing the over-representation of Native Americans in the jail system. While relationships with tribal communities have improved, there is still progress to be made.

Last, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on every aspect of the county’s local justice system. The foundation of collaborative, data-driven strategies, including the necessary structures and collaboration from local stakeholders that are in place to support these strategies, has set the county up well to respond to the pandemic effectively.

More Results

Milwaukee County has far exceeded its original goal, which was to reduce the overall jail population by 19%, thanks to a partnership among system and community stakeholders working hand-in-hand to build a more fair, efficient, and effective justice system.

As a result of the county’s efforts to center racial equity, county departments are now required to use an equity budget tool across multiple domains, including workforce inclusivity and diversity, people-focused design, employee perspective, and improved performance/equity practice.

The county’s emphasis on trauma-informed practices resulted in a better understanding of trauma among system stakeholders. Over 500 county employees were trained in how trauma impacts people throughout the justice system.

Remaining Challenges

Milwaukee County is focused on addressing its remaining challenges in its local justice system.

Racial disparities continue to persist in the local justice system. Going forward, the Race, Equity, and Procedural Justice workgroup outlined a six-point Racial Equity strategy. Under this strategy, the CJC will hire a racial equity coordinator, engage in analyses to address disparities at system decision points, develop a criminal justice strategic plan with system and community partners, re-launch a criminal justice learning series, and invite community members and people with lived experience to join criminal justice workgroups.

Lastly, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on every aspect of the county’s local justice system and continues to uniquely affect those incarcerated in the local jail. However, the foundation of collaborative, data-driven strategies supported by the Safety and Justice Challenge, including the necessary structures and collaboration from local stakeholders that are in place to support these strategies, has set the county up well to respond to the pandemic effectively.

More Results

By 2020, jail use in Charleston County was returning to its intended purpose, reducing the harms of unnecessary incarceration on people, families, and communities. This included a reduction in the jail population, local bookings, individuals booked, and charges.

The centralized database, launched in 2017, and now provides access from across the criminal justice system to see results, conduct analysis, and evaluate how the local criminal justice system is functioning and allows for identification of areas with the opportunity for improvement. This reporting shows that the municipal and magistrate charges brought to the jail declined by 78% from 2014 – 2020.

Five single-charge bookings, including simple possession of marijuana, open container, misdemeanor shoplifting, trespassing, and public intoxication, were specifically targeted as part of the county’s Safety and Justice Challenge efforts, and as a result, were reduced by 84% from 2014 – 2020. The number of people regularly cycling through the jail who were booked and released between 2014 – 2020 decreased by 63%.

The county made significant progress in diverting people from jail to alternatives to help get the help they need. In 2019, law enforcement referred 74 individuals to the Tri-County Crisis Stabilization Center, conducted 473 law enforcement consultations with embedded clinicians, and executed 152 law enforcement drop-offs to the Charleston Dorchester Mental Health Center.

Bond court representations by public defender attorneys started in 2016, gradually increasing from zero in 2015, to 2,128 in 2020. Bond court judges also became involved as partners, getting more information on setting bonds that are fair, just, and meaningful. As part of this, Pretrial Service Reports were set up in 2018 to better inform bond setting judges. These reports offered a consistent, objective, and reliable way to assess for risk of rearrests and/or missing court. By 2020, the reports became available to over 90% of bond hearings in the Centralized Bond Court.

The average number of days in the early stages of case processing improved from 2015 to 2020. This included improvements in the time it took to be assigned a public defender, assigned a solicitor, and how long it took for initial evidence from law enforcement to be provided to prosecutors.

While analyzing the relative rates of incarceration between racial and ethnic groups helped the county improve inequities in the criminal justice system, there is still more work to do. Disproportionately, Black people were booked into the local jail on low-level target charges as well as overall charges, although the gap had shrunk between 2014 and 2017.

The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) efforts to engage the community in the development of the strategic plan brought together over 1,200 community members, including many with direct experience of the justice system. Together, community members and system stakeholders (i.e., judges, public defenders, prosecutors, etc.) created the CJCC’s strategic plan in 2020, focusing on identifying data trends and community priorities to advance change for the next three years (FY2021 – FY2023).

Remaining Challenges

Charleston County is focused on addressing its remaining challenges in its local justice system.

The county’s current strategic plan aims to do more to help protect public safety, minimize harm, and more efficiently use limited system resources—all to create an effective, just, and equitable local criminal justice system.

The strategic plan includes a focus on community engagement, to keep people involved and provide more ways to engage in improving its criminal justice system. It also includes a planned update on the data around racial and ethnic disproportionality and disparities. Beyond data, a race equity fellowship proposal is in the works to create effective agents of change in building consciousness and reducing disparities among criminal justice system actors and people who are leading efforts to address racial and ethnic inequities throughout the community.

Regular reviews of the local jail population continue to be necessary, helping make sure that people who are not a threat to public safety or a flight risk are not detained pretrial unnecessarily. Continued General Sessions court reminders continue to remind defendants of their upcoming court events to increase court appearances and help make sure that the system doesn’t lose contact with people while their cases are pending.

The county must also continue to work on options for diverting and deflecting people from jail. This will include inter-agency case conferencing with service providers, law enforcement, and judicial stakeholders to improve outcomes for those who are most frequently booked into the local jail in an effort to break the cycle of repeated jail use; research on how diversion and deflection from the criminal justice system and into diversionary options impacts arrests, jail population, and behavioral health outcomes; and stronger county-wide tracking on crime and jail use.

The county will also continue to focus on bond hearings in Centralized Bond Court are fair, just, and meaningful. Regardless of the type of bond set, within the state there is currently minimal oversight of the conditions of the bond setting, let alone feedback about pretrial outcomes or a continuum of pretrial options available to help maximize safety and improve the rate of appearances. The strategic plan includes developing a proposal to help address these challenges.

The CJCC, in partnership with Trident United Way 211, is working to strengthen the directory of services for justice-involved people that will help ensure they know which services are available and who they can help.

Last, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on every aspect of the county’s local justice system and continues to uniquely affect those incarcerated in jail. More research is needed on the impacts of the pandemic on the justice system, and what lessons can be learned in the long-term.

More Results

The county has been able to reduce its jail population since joining the Safety and Justice Challenge while keeping the community safe.

In addition, the county found that individuals who are represented by the Public Defender at first appearance have a lower booking rate than those who are not. From there, the Office of the Public Defender started providing representation during evening and overnight preliminary arraignments. As a result, Magisterial District Judges used monetary bond 39% less often versus a comparison from the same timeframe in 2018.

The number of people detained by the county’s Adult Probation dropped 41.5% from October 2018 to April 2021. In addition, during the same time period, the early probation violation process saved an average of 84 days in jail for over 300 cases.

Remaining Challenges

Allegheny County is focused on addressing its remaining challenges in its local justice system.

First is that the COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted how long it takes to resolve cases, and second, and the county has seen an increase in racial disparities in the jail population.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on every aspect of the county’s local justice system and continues to uniquely affect those incarcerated in local jails. The foundation of collaborative, data-driven strategies, including the necessary structures and collaboration from local stakeholders that were developed to support these strategies, set the county up well to respond to the pandemic swiftly and effectively, however challenges remain.

Like many jurisdictions, Allegheny County has seen incarceration rates drop for Black individuals, while the racial disparity in the jail population has grown. The county is working with the Burns Institute on strategies to address this disparity, while still working tirelessly to reduce overall incarceration rates.