By Erin Jacobs Valentine, Sarah Picard

Jurisdictions across the United States are implementing reforms to their pretrial systems to reduce the number of people who are held in pretrial detention—that is, who remain incarcerated in jail while they await the adjudication of their cases. As part of this effort, many jurisdictions are moving away from money bail as a primary means to encourage people to return for future court dates, and are instead implementing pretrial supervision, which requires clients to meet regularly with supervision staff members. Jurisdictions often attempt to match the intensity or frequency of supervision with a client’s assessed risk of failing to appear in court or being rearrested, for example by requiring more intensive supervision for clients who are assessed as being at a high risk. However, while different levels of pretrial supervision impose different burdens and costs on both jurisdictions and people awaiting the resolutions of their cases, there has been little systematic research into how they differ in their effectiveness in improving court appearance and arrest outcomes.

This report contributes new evidence in this area using retrospective data from cases initiated between January 2017 and June 2019 in two jurisdictions: one populous, urban metropolitan area in the western United States and a sparsely populated, rural county from the same region. The research team employed a regression discontinuity design, comparing the outcomes of people whose risk scores were just below and just above the cutoff for a level of supervision. They did so for four supervision levels: (1) no supervision, (2) low-intensity supervision that involved only check-ins with supervision staff members after court hearings, (3) medium-intensity supervision that also required one in-person meeting a month with a supervision staff member, and (4) high-intensity supervision that required three in-person meetings per month. The analysis uses a noninferiority approach, which tests whether the less intensive form of supervision is at least as effective as (that is, no worse than) the more intensive form.

The analysis found that:

Overall, lower-intensity supervision was as effective as higher-intensity supervision in helping clients to appear in court and avoid new arrests. When comparing each level of supervision with the next level in intensity, assignment to less intensive supervision led to similar outcomes as assignment to more intensive supervision.

Risk scores were strongly correlated with rearrest rates and modestly correlated with court appearance rates. Unsurprisingly, people with higher risk scores were more likely to be rearrested, and somewhat less likely to make scheduled court appearances. However, higher-intensity supervision did not mitigate this effect.

Overall, the analysis found no evidence that requiring people to meet more intensive pretrial supervision requirements improves outcomes. These findings suggest that policymakers should consider other strategies to encourage people to appear in court and avoid arrest, especially since supervision has costs, including monetary costs to jurisdictions and time and travel costs to clients. It is possible, for example, that strategies that involve service connections rather than supervision could be more effective. At the same time, the results indicate that more research on the use of pretrial supervision is needed. Because the regression discontinuity design of this study focuses on cases at particular risk levels—those near the cutoff risk scores that determine supervision intensity—it is possible that the results would differ for cases with other risk levels. For example, high-intensity supervision could have effects among very high-risk cases, a question that this analysis was not designed to address. Given that prior research suggests that both service and supervision resources are most effective when reserved for higher-risk and -need cases, studies focusing solely on outcomes among this group could be of great benefit to the field.

New York: MDRC, 2023. 77p.

By Chloe Anderson Golub, Erin Jacobs Valentine, Daron Holman

As more jurisdictions across the country are seeking to reduce their jail populations, many view electronic monitoring (EM, the use of an electronic device to monitor a person’s movement and location) and sobriety monitoring (regular drug and alcohol testing) as potential alternatives to pretrial detention. In theory, the added layer of supervision that these special conditions provide should encourage people to appear for court dates and avoid activities that could lead to new arrests. Yet most studies of the effectiveness of special conditions have faced methodological limitations and have yielded mixed findings. Furthermore, special conditions such as electronic monitoring and sobriety monitoring carry significant costs—both personal and monetary—for those being monitored and for jurisdictions.

This report contributes cross-jurisdiction evidence on the effects of these special conditions of release using retrospective data from cases initiated between January 2017 and June 2019 in four diverse jurisdictions across the United States: one small and rural, one medium-sized, and two large and urban jurisdictions. The MDRC research team employed a propensity score matching design to test the effectiveness of EM and sobriety monitoring in maintaining clients’ court appearance rates and helping them avoid arrest. This method allowed the team to compare court appearance and pretrial rearrest outcomes for individuals released with special conditions with those of statistically comparable individuals who were released without special conditions. The analysis uses a noninferiority approach, which tests whether release without special conditions is at least as effective as (that is, no worse than) release with a special condition.

The analysis found that:

Being released on EM or sobriety monitoring did not significantly improve court appearance rates. The analyses found that the special conditions and non–special conditions groups had similar pretrial court appearance rates. These results were consistent across jurisdictions.

Being released on electronic monitoring did not significantly increase the percentage of people who avoided a new arrest during the pretrial period. In fact, the analysis found that the EM group had a higher pretrial rearrest rate than the non-EM group, a result that was consistent across the two jurisdictions in that analysis. While the factors causing the results are not definitively known, the difference may be a supervision effect: people may be more likely to be arrested if their actions are more closely monitored, compared with others who are less closely monitored. Alternatively, the result may reflect unmeasured differences between the EM and non-EM groups that could not be controlled for in the analysis.

Being released on sobriety monitoring did not significantly improve the percentage of people who avoided a new arrest, but there was variation in this effect among jurisdictions. In two of the four jurisdictions studied, people who were assigned to sobriety monitoring were more likely to avoid new arrests, while in the other two, the result was the opposite.

These findings warrant cautious reflection among policymakers and practitioners on the extent of current electronic and sobriety monitoring use, particularly considering their high personal and financial costs to those directly affected and to jurisdictions. The exploratory findings also highlight a need for additional cross-site studies—in particular, those that employ more rigorous experimental methods—on the effectiveness of special conditions at the pretrial stage. Given the site variation in findings, particularly for sobriety monitoring, more research is also needed to delineate the populations that would benefit from special conditions from those who would not benefit and to illuminate the policies and practices that are associated with the greatest success.

New York: MDRC, 2023. 51p.

By Paul Guerin

This study reviews felony court cases in the Second Judicial District Court with a Public Safety Assessment (PSA) and a pretrial detention (PTD) motion filed between July 2017 and June 2023. The dataset of 6,698 cases includes court data and jail data that is used to study the cases from the filing of the case to the court disposition. It is important to note this review includes the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic likely had some impact on case filings, time to case dispositions, and jails admissions and lengths of stay. This review found that a slightly higher percent of court cases on which a preventive detention motion was filed was granted compared to denied motions. The study confirms other research that cases with higher FTA and NCA scores are more likely to have granted motions and that motions were most likely to be filed on cases with violent charges. We found 55% of closed cases had a conviction and were sentenced and that 43.5% were dismissed or nolled and so did not result in a conviction. Cases with denied preventive detention motions spent few days in the MDC regardless of their disposition. Cases with a granted motion that were eventually dismissed or nolled spent slightly more than 120 days in the MDC and a similar number of days in the court system. Dismissals and nolles occur at the case level for a variety of reasons including uncooperative witnesses, lack of probable cause, and because some cases might be refiled in the Federal court system. Various criminal justice system level reasons may also exist. This includes the volume of crime and arrests with resulting court case filings, the complexity of cases, and staffing among the various agencies. This preliminary review of preventive detention motion cases in the Second Judicial District Court is the first of its kind to report on the disposition of cases with a preventive detention motion. In the future more sophisticated and detailed analyses and reporting could occur that further detail the relationship between PSA scores, preventive detention motions and results, and court case dispositions.

Albuquerque: Center for Applied Research and Analysis, Institute for Social Research, University of New Mexico , 2024. 13p.

By Kristine Denman and Ella Siegrist  

The New Mexico Statistical Analysis Center received funding from the Bureau of Justice Statistics to complete a multi-phase study assessing New Mexico’s bail reform efforts. The current report examines the impact of bail reform in six New Mexico counties. This study first explores the use and amount of bond judges ordered as recorded in criminal court cases where conditions of release were set, using data from the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC). The data includes cases disposed between 2015 and 2019, and consists of misdemeanor and felony cases, both pretrial and post-disposition. Second, using data from New Mexico county detention centers and the AOC, the study explores the impact of bail reform among defendants booked between 2015 and 2019 for a new felony offense. This allows us to examine the impact of bail reform on pretrial practices among felony defendants—the target of New Mexico’s constitutional amendment on bail reform. Specifically, the study examines four outcomes: pretrial detention practices, the use of bond, failure/success rates among those released pretrial; and court efficiency. By analyzing pre- and post- bail reform data, we found that the amendment has been successful in reducing the average amount of bond ordered and the frequency with which it is ordered. Judges, however, ordered temporary no-bond holds when issuing a warrant for arrest more frequently after bail reform. Overall, defendants involved in new felony cases were detained for a shorter period of time. However, this was not true across the board: a slightly greater percentage were subject to a short period of detention (rather than immediate release), and those detained during the entire pretrial period spent more time in jail post-reform. During the pretrial period, new violent offenses increased slightly by 2%; new offenses overall increased by 1%. Failures to appear were more common after bail reform, with a 5% increase, but this varied significantly by county. In general, time to case resolution decreased post-bail reform, though cases involving defendants detained the entire pretrial period took slightly longer to resolve. 

Albuquerque: New Mexico Statistical Analysis Center   2022. 57p.