Examining the Efficacy of Pretrial Release Conditions, Sanctions and Screening with the State Co

Abstract

The efficacy of the implementation of pretrial screening, pretrial release conditions, and pretrial release sanctions has, to date, not been heavily investigated in multi-jurisdictional studies of defendants released to pretrial programs on conditional release. By merging the BJS 1990-2004 State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) with the 1999 BJA-PSRC Pretrial Release Programming at the Start of the 21st Century Survey, we analyze the impact of variation in availability and type of pretrial release conditions, pretrial release sanctions, and pretrial screening in 27 of the cumulative SCPS 65 counties. Findings suggest that: 1) a pretrial program’s use of quantitative or mixed quantitative-qualitative risk assessments lowers a defendant’s likelihood of pretrial misconduct; 2) a pretrial program’s ability to impose sanctions and report to courts is associated with less pretrial misconduct; 3) the more ways pa pretrial program has to follow-up a failure to appear the lower the likelihood of a defendant’s pretrial misconduct; 4) a pretrial program’s use of targeted mental health screening lowers a defendant’s likelihood of pretrial misconduct; and 5) a pretrial program’s ability to supervise mentally ill defendants lowers the likelihood of a defendant’s rearrest. (palabras claves: servicios de antelación al juicio, supervision)