Topic: Pretrial

Research Report

Disability LGBTQ Pretrial June 23, 2025

An Intersectional Approach to Advocacy on Prison and Jail Conditions

This paper examines the profound and disproportionate harms caused by mass incarceration in the U.S., with a focus on pretrial detention and the experiences of multiply marginalized individuals, particularly disabled people, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and those at the intersections of these identities. Pretrial detention impacts nearly a million people daily, many of whom are held without conviction, leading to severe physical, psychological, and social consequences. Although reform efforts have brought attention to the broader harms of incarceration, they often fail to account for the unique and compounded risks faced by people with intersecting marginalized identities. For example, incarcerated women, particularly women of color and survivors of sexual violence, are disproportionately affected by trauma and mental health conditions like PTSD and depression. Similarly, disabled people, especially those who are Black, Latinx, or Indigenous, are overrepresented in jails and face exacerbated health conditions due to poor carceral environments.

Using intersectionality theory as a framework, this paper highlights how various identities—race, gender, disability, and class—interact to intensify the harms of incarceration. It discusses the structural inequalities that contribute to the over-policing and over-incarceration of marginalized communities and explores how the conditions of confinement can both worsen and produce disabilities. Furthermore, the paper reviews current data on the demographics of incarcerated populations, highlighting the overrepresentation of people with disabilities, transgender individuals, and people of color. This report argues for an intersectional approach to criminal justice reform, advocating for systemic change that includes reducing reliance on pretrial detention, improving conditions within carceral institutions, expanding alternatives to incarceration, and addressing the unique needs of multiply marginalized populations. In addition, it offers key action steps such as improving data collection, promoting harm reduction strategies, increasing access to mental health services, and ending the use of solitary confinement.

The paper concludes that real reform requires a shift from punitive to restorative justice models, ensuring that advocacy efforts center the voices and lived experiences of those most affected by the criminal legal system. Through a comprehensive intersectional lens, this paper seeks to contribute to a broader conversation about decarceration and the abolition of pretrial detention, while addressing the structural inequities embedded in the U.S. criminal justice system.

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Research Report

Bail Courts Pretrial July 31, 2023

Understanding and Reframing an Individual’s Failure to Appear in Court

Shannon Magnuson, Senior Associate, Justice System Partners

Failure to appear in court is often a disproportionate driver of jail populations. It is important to understand it better and to reframe it, as part of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC)—which is reducing jail populations across America. Justice System Partners (JSP), a technical assistance provider to the Safety and Justice Challenge, recently conducted an in-depth study about why people do not get to court as scheduled in Lake County, Illinois. Leadership there know even one night in jail can be disastrous for some people. It can lead to a host of negative consequences including loss of employment. But they saw bench warrants for missing court were also driving their jail population at a disparate rate. That is why they wanted to know more about why people miss court.

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Research Report

COVID Data Analysis Incarceration Trends Pretrial November 18, 2022

Measuring Progress: The Fall & Rise of Jail Populations During the Pandemic

Cecilia Low-Weiner, Brandon Martinez, Benjamin Estep, CUNY Institute for STate and Local Governance

A Closer Look at COVID-19’s Effect on Bookings in Safety and Justice Challenge Communities

Across the country, counties seeking to curb the overuse and misuse of jails have looked to a common entry point to do so: their front doors. Since the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) launched in 2015, participating communities have implemented data-driven strategies that have helped reduce the number of people booked into their jails, reductions often closely linked to declines in overall jail population. By January 2020, just prior to the onset of COVID-19, bookings had declined in SJC communities overall by 13 percent, with no negative impacts on community safety: crime trends remained stable or decreased following SJC implementation. When the pandemic started spreading across the United States in early 2020—especially rapidly within jails—SJC communities began implementing emergency measures to reduce their jail populations, many of which directly impacted bookings and resulted in steep declines.

In an effort to understand how these declines were achieved in individual communities, and gain insight into how to sustain these lowered populations, SJC site coordinators collected information on the strategies implemented and closely tracked jail trends. This brief seeks to expand upon findings from Measuring Progress—an online tool developed by the CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG) that measures jail trends since SJC implementation—to explore booking-related trends across communities pre- and post-COVID, offering a first look at how some of these emergency decarceration strategies may have impacted trends and what has happened since normal operations have resumed.

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Research Report

Human Toll of Jail Pretrial October 12, 2022

Cages Without Bars

Patrice James, Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative
James Kilgore, MediaJustice
Gabriela Kirk, Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University
Grace Mueller, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts
Sarah Staudt, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts
Emmett Sanders, Challenging E-Carceration
LaTanya R. Jackson Wilson, Shriver Center on Poverty Law

Pretrial Electronic Monitoring Across the United States

Across the United States each year, hundreds of thousands of people accused but not yet convicted of crimes are required by the courts to participate in electronic monitoring programs. These people are fitted with a locked, tightened ankle shackle, which often tracks every move they make.

Pretrial electronic monitoring programs represent a fast-growing type of incarceration that imposes significant harm and burdens on people who are subject to it. We interviewed people subject to monitoring, program administrators, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys across select jurisdictions to better understand how pretrial electronic monitoring is used.

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Research Report

Data Analysis Pretrial July 1, 2022

Expanding Supervised Release in New York City

Safety and Justice Challenge, Center for Court Innovation

In 2015, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a multi-year initiative to reduce populations and racial disparities in American jails. To advance knowledge development grounded in a research agenda that explores, evaluates, and documents site-specific strategies to safely and effectively reduce jail populations and address racial and ethnic disparities, the Foundation engaged the Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG) at the City University of New York (CUNY) to establish and oversee an SJC Research Consortium. Consortium members are nationally renowned research, policy, and academic organizations collaborating with SJC sites to build an evidence base focused on pretrial reform efforts.

Under New York City’s Supervised Release Program (SRP) individuals awaiting trial are released under community supervision to ensure their return to court, instead of via bail or pretrial detention. Defendants are eligible for the citywide SRP if they meet specific criteria, including arrest charge type, estimated risk status, and community ties. Towards the goal of reducing the jail population, New York City expanded the City’s Supervised Release Program (SRP) several times by altering the eligibility criteria to include a wider range of individuals. The first large expansion of SRP since 2016 occurred at the beginning of June 2019. A subsequent program expansion occurred in December 2019 as New York State prepared for 2020 bail reform legislation to go into effect.

In an effort to better understand the impact of expansion of SRP as a jail-reduction strategy, ISLG and the SJC Research Consortium funded the Center for Court Innovation to examine the impact of the June 2019 expansion. The Center conducted a time series analysis to determine if observed post-expansion SRP enrollment and/or detention rates significantly differed from predicted rates. The study found that the expansion increased SRP rates across racial groups and reduced detention for non-violent felony offenses, though not for misdemeanor offenses. In addition, the findings show increased use of SRP for misdemeanor offenses, which may suggest net-widening.

Key takeaways:

1. Increasing program participation does not always decrease detention. For small program expansions (like the 2019 expansion) to have a true impact on detention, these initiatives must target serious crimes that are likely to be detained.

2. Large changes are needed for large impact. Larger expansions, especially those that are driven by legislative change (like the December 2019 expansion in preparation for bail reform), can have a greater impact on detention compared to smaller expansions.

3. Targeted efforts to reduce racial disparities are necessary. Disparities are not automatically impacted by increasing program participation and decreasing detention across the board. To reduce racial disparities, targeted efforts must be made.

Together, the findings suggest that the SRP expansion reduced detention for some offenses and highlight the importance of measuring the impact of program implementation and expansion to inform future work and jail reduction efforts in New York City and other jurisdictions.

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