Pretrial Services Research Articles

Occupational Stress Associated With Technological Diversion Among Pretrial Services Officers: A Qualitative Case Study of GPS Supervision for Intimate Partner and Domestic Violence Cases

The application of global positioning system (GPS) technology as a pretrial diversion mechanism to monitor intimate partner and domestic violence (IPV/DV) cases has become increasingly common. As more jurisdictions implement GPS technology, there is a need to understand the workplace experiences of community corrections officers with this nascent supervision strategy. This qualitative case study draws upon the experiences gleaned from in-depth interviews with all the pretrial officers assigned to technology caseloads ( n = 8) in a single jurisdiction to explore prevailing occupational stress themes associated with GPS supervision for IPV/DV cases as a diversion from pretrial detention. The results reinforce and extend a range of well-established stressors in the extant literature related to pretrial officers managing a GPS caseload of IPV/DV defendants. The findings highlight that pretrial officers using GPS technology are expected to serve in other unique roles (e.g., critical educator, software engineer, data collection specialist, communication expert, and victim advocate) in the course of their duties that were unanticipated sources of occupational stress. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Understanding racial disparities in pretrial detention recommendations to shape policy reform

AbstractResearch SummaryFederal pretrial services and probation officers assess defendants and make influential recommendations that defendants be either released or detained, based on their threat to community safety and risk of flight. To inform efforts to reduce disparities in pretrial detention, we examined officers’ decision making about 149,815 defendants across 81 districts. Overall, the probability of a detention recommendation was 34% higher for Black than White defendants. Racial disparities were most pronounced in ambiguous cases that invoked substantial officer discretion—including cases where the defendant had little or no criminal record. Nevertheless, mediation analyses revealed that up to 79% of the racial disparity in detention recommendations operates through institutionalized factors (i.e., pretrial policy) rather than personally mediated factors (e.g., implicit racism or classism). The lion's share of the disparity operates through one institutionalized factor alone: criminal history.Policy ImplicationsThis study illustrates an empirical strategy for understanding the pathways through which disparities operate, which is crucial for shaping effective solutions. Providing officers with training and decision guides could reduce personally mediated bias—which is crucial for high discretion cases. However, this study shows that disparities mostly flow through institutionalized bias. So, greater gains may be had by making strategic shifts in policies and their implementation. One promising direction is to corral criminal history by adopting a tight definition that demonstrably predicts violence and failure to appear, and limiting the weight assigned to criminal history versus other predictive factors, when making recommendations. Another promising direction is to adopt risk‐based release policies that leverage an existing tool to reduce both detention rates and racial disparities.

Racial bias as a multi‐stage, multi‐actor problem: An analysis of pretrial detention

AbstractAfter arrest, criminal defendants are often detained before trial to mitigate potential risks to public safety. There is widespread concern, however, that detention decisions are biased against racial minorities. When assessing potential racial discrimination in pretrial detention, past studies have typically worked to quantify the extent to which the ultimate judicial decision is conditioned on the defendant's race. Although often useful, this approach suffers from three important limitations. First, it ignores the multi‐stage nature of the pretrial process, in which decisions and recommendations are made over multiple court appearances that influence the final judgment. Second, it does not consider the multiple actors involved, including prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges, each of whom have different responsibilities and incentives. Finally, a narrow focus on disparate treatment fails to consider potential disparate impact arising from facially neutral policies and practices. Addressing these limitations, here we present a framework for quantifying disparate impact in multi‐stage, multi‐actor settings, illustrating our approach using 10 years of data on pretrial decisions from a federal district court. We find that Hispanic defendants are released at lower rates than white defendants of similar safety and nonappearance risk. We trace these disparities to decisions of assistant US attorneys at the initial hearings, decisions driven in part by a statutory mandate that lowers the procedural bar for moving for detention of defendants in certain types of cases. We also find that the Pretrial Services Agency recommends detention of Black defendants at higher rates than white defendants of similar risk, though we do not find evidence that these recommendations translate to disparities in actual release rates. Finally, we find that traditional disparate treatment analyses yield more modest evidence of discrimination in pretrial detention outcomes, highlighting the value of our more expansive analysis for identifying, and ultimately remediating, unjust disparities in the pretrial process. We conclude with a discussion of how risk‐based threshold release policies could help to mitigate observed disparities, and the estimated impact of various policies on violation rates in the partner jurisdiction.

Risk of Revocation: Assessing Correlates of Failure in a Pretrial Services Program

Personal recognizance (PR) bonds, often an option in pretrial services programs, allow defendants to be released while awaiting trial without financial backing. This offers some relief for jail overcrowding and permits the defendant the ability to maintain responsibilities of daily life. Not everyone released, however, successfully participates in these programs. This study seeks to analyze correlates and predictors of various types of non-compliance that could result in pretrial release forfeiture, operationalized by failure to appear in court and incurring new charges while on PR bond. This dependent variable is analyzed with several predictor variables that are excluded from traditional risk assessment tools and criminal history to determine the offenders most at risk for failure on pretrial release through a PR bond. Findings suggest the presence of several protective factors for program failure that are not typically considered when making release decisions such as having a passport and being the primary caregiver of children. The implications of these effects as well as variables that were collected but unable to be included in the present study are discussed.

Supporting Responsive Federal Drug Sentencing Through Education in the Workshop on Science-Informed Decision Making

On the federal level, judicial education in sentencing has been focused primarily on preparing judges to calculate and apply the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. But in an advisory guidelines context, making individualized assessments in drug cases requires education in the science of addictions, the drivers of behavior, and the prospects for behavior change when substances are involved. Neuroscience and the sciences of human behavior provide clarifying insight into substance-driven behaviors and cognitions that are routinely encountered in federal drug cases. These disciplines support individualized sentencing by shedding new light on the nature of inhibitory control, the reasonable expectations for relapse, and the distinctions that can be drawn based on science between different treatment interventions. In this Article, we report on the Workshop on Science-Informed Decision Making, an education initiative in the federal judiciary. Since 2016, it has provided education in neuroscience and behavioral science, as well as skills training in individualizing sentences using insights from that science, to U.S. district judges, magistrate judges, and pretrial services and probation officers in thirty-two federal districts. We describe the case-study-based instructional approach of the workshop, including some of the misconceptions about addiction behavior it addresses, and explain why we believe that this kind of education helps federal judges, and pretrial services and probation officers, craft more responsive sentencing decisions and recommendations.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Recidivism Studies

Recidivism is now the guiding principle of punishment and has become the new hallmark of criminal justice reform, as reflected in the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s recidivism project. So far, the Commission has issued three reports in 2020 alone, which outline the parameters within which “safe” criminal justice reform can proceed. Yet the overly broad definition of “recidivism” and the focus on easily measurable and static risk factors, such as prior criminal record, create a feedback loop. The Commission’s work should come with a warning label. Its recidivism studies should not be consumed on their own. Instead, they must be read in conjunction with U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services recidivism research, which includes data on the impact of programming, treatment, and services on reentry success. Yet, concerns about undercounting recidivism events drive the entire U.S. approach. Western European studies reflect different philosophies and values that explain some of the underlying reasons for the dramatically different imprisonment rates on the two sides of the Atlantic. These recidivism studies raise also questions about the Commission’s role. Its ongoing preference for imprisonment indicates that it continues to consider itself the guardian of incarceration-driven guidelines. The studies reenforce the status quo and the Commission’s role in it. They threaten to propel us into data-driven selective incapacitation and continuously long prison terms for those with prior criminal records, all in the name of public safety.

Beyond Cash Bail: Public Health, Risk Assessment, and California Senate Bill 10

The detrimental effects of incarceration on physical and mental health are widely acknowledged. However, 76% of the United States jail population is awaiting trial without having been convicted of a crime (Sawyer and Wagner 2020). This is driven by the monetary bail system, which the state of California moved to abolish by passing the 2018 California Money Bail Reform Act (Senate Bill 10, hereafter SB 10). SB 10 proposes the use of algorithmically driven risk assessment tools to determine pretrial release. However, actuarial risk assessments are not calibrated to California’s diverse demography and are insufficient to determine which defendants pose flight or public safety risks. SB 10 is predicted to perpetuate similar socioeconomic and racial disparities as the current system, while failing to decrease pretrial detention. We recommend opposing SB 10 in favor of pretrial release for most misdemeanor and nonviolent defendants. The funding currently allocated for pretrial detainment should be redirected toward evidence-based and restorative pretrial supervision practices through the enactment of new bail-reform legislation by the state of California. Increasing the use of diversion programs, which redirect defendants to the appropriate mental health or substance abuse programs, also presents opportunities to restore treatment to the jurisdiction of public health rather than criminal justice. Transitioning from a reliance on pretrial detention to pretrial services will mitigate the collateral effects of incarceration while improving public health, public safety, and substantially reducing the cost of incarceration.

Alabama DMH to offer trauma response training

The Alabama Department of Mental Health (ADMH) announced the addition of 19 new Nationally Certified Trauma Trainers in the state of Alabama to offer trauma‐informed response training throughout the state, CBS 42 reported June 3. The certification is provided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration's (SAMHSA's) GAINS Center for Behavioral Health and Justice Transformation. ADMH was one of 10 communities chosen nationally to participate in the trauma‐informed care experience and this training includes seven ADMH staff members. The training, “How Being Trauma‐Informed Improves Criminal Justice System Responses,” helps educate criminal justice professionals about the impact of trauma and how to develop trauma‐informed responses. During the four‐hour highly interactive training, professionals increase their understanding of trauma, create an awareness of the impact of trauma on behavior, and develop trauma‐informed responses. This is tailored to community‐based criminal justice professionals including: behavioral health providers and other human services providers, community correction (probation, parole, and pretrial services officers), court personnel, and police.

Machine learning’s limitations in avoiding automation of bias

The use of predictive systems has become wider with the development of related computational methods, and the evolution of the sciences in which these methods are applied Solon and Selbst (Calif L REV 104: 671–732, 2016) and Pedreschi et al. (2007). The referred methods include machine learning techniques, face and/or voice recognition, temperature mapping, and other, within the artificial intelligence domain. These techniques are being applied to solve problems in socially and politically sensitive areas such as crime prevention and justice management, crowd management, and emotion analysis, just to mention a few. However, dissimilar predictions can be found nowadays as the result of the application of these methods resulting in misclassification, for example for the case of conviction risk assessment Office of Probation and Pretrial Services (2011) or decision-making process when designing public policies Lange (2015). The goal of this paper is to identify current gaps on fairness achievement within the context of predictive systems in artificial intelligence by analyzing available academic and scientific literature up to 2020. To achieve this goal, we have gathered available materials at the Web of Science and Scopus from last 5 years and analyzed the different proposed methods and their results in relation to the bias as an emergent issue in the Artificial Intelligence field of study. Our tentative conclusions indicate that machine learning has some intrinsic limitations which are leading to automate the bias when designing predictive algorithms. Consequently, other methods should be explored; or we should redefine the way current machine learning approaches are being used when building decision making/decision support systems for crucial institutions of our political systems such as the judicial system, just to mention one.

Racial Inequality and Systemic Injustice, the Coronavirus Pandemic, and the Courts

The twin crises of systemic injustice and the vulnerabilities of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 have caused unprecedented social and economic upheaval – including economic contraction and sometimes violent street protests. Combined and entwined in a shameful way, systemic injustices and the relentless pandemic constitute existential threats to society disproportionately affecting marginalized and disadvantaged people. Confronting these threats is not just about the reform and revamping of one or two unjust institutions or units of government – the police and the health care system. It is instead an overdue reckoning on white supremacy, pervasive racial and ethnic injustices, and a deadly lack of preparedness for crises that were long anticipated. It is a challenge of transformative change that calls for a holistic response, a whole-of-society approach (WOSA) that must include the courts and the entire justice system, including the police, prosecution, defense, pretrial services, jail, prison, probation, and parole.This article is a call to action for the judicial branch of governments, including judges, court administrators, and their justice systems partners, not only to continue to provide critical justice services but also to advocate and to execute a whole-of-society approach (WOSA). This approach is essential to begin to root out racial biases and to combat the threats to our safety, security, and health during the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors present three reasons for court leaders and court administrators to get off the sidelines, to make their voices heard, and to become proactive participants in the fight against the existential threats of the admixture of systemic injustice and inequality, combined with our vulnerability to COVID-19: (1) the crises of disease, injustice, protests, and violence demand a WOSA that must include the courts and the justice system; (2) the courts’ silence and reluctance to join fight cannot be defended; and (3) judges, court administrators, and their justice system partners must close the gap between the de jure and de facto law, i.e., the law on the books and the law in practice.

Introduction to the special issue gender and white-collar crime

In 2015 Erin Harbinson, then a PhD candidate in criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati approached the U. S. Probation and Pre-Trial Services Office (PPSO) and offered to conduct a study o...

Assessing the Assessments: Lessons from Early State Experiences In the Procurement and Implementation of Risk Assessment Tools

This piece endeavors to provide context for state and local officials considering tasks around development, procurement, implementation, and use of risk assessment tools. It begins with brief case studies of four states that adopted (or attempted to adopt) such tools early on and describes their experiences. It then draws lessons from these case studies and suggests some questions that procurement officials should ask of themselves, their colleagues who call for the acquisition and implementation of tools, and the developers who create them. This paper concludes by examining existing frameworks for technological and algorithmic fairness. The authors offer a framework of four questions that government procurers should be asking at the point of adopting RA tools. That framework draws from the experiences of the states we study and offers a way to think about accuracy (i.e., the RA tool’s ability to accurately predict recidivism), fairness (i.e., the extent to which an RA tool treats all defendants fairly, without exhibiting racial bias or discrimination), interpretability (the extent to which an RA tool can be interpreted by criminal justice officials and stakeholders, including judges, lawyers, and defendants), and operability (the extent to which an RA tool can be administered by officers within police, pretrial services, and corrections).

Does GPS supervision of intimate partner violence defendants reduce pretrial misconduct? Evidence from a quasi-experimental study

This research examines the effect global positioning system (GPS) technology supervision has on pretrial misconduct for defendants facing intimate partner violence charges. Drawing on data from one pretrial services division, a retrospective quasi-experimental design was constructed to examine failure to appear to court, failure to appear to meetings with pretrial services, and rearrest outcomes between defendants ordered to pretrial GPS supervision and a comparison group of defendants ordered to pretrial supervision without the use of monitoring technology. Cox regression models were used to assess differences between quasi-experimental conditions. To enhance internal validity and mitigate model dependence, we utilized and compared results across four counterfactual comparison groups (propensity score matching, Mahalanobis distance matching, inverse probability of treatment weighting, and marginal mean weighting through stratification). Pretrial GPS supervision was no more or less effective than traditional, non-technology based pretrial supervision in reducing the risk of failure to appear to court or the risk of rearrest. GPS supervision did reduce the risk of failing to appear to meetings with pretrial services staff. The results suggest that GPS supervision may hold untapped case management benefits for pretrial probation officers, a pragmatic focus that may be overshadowed by efforts to mitigate the risk of pretrial misconduct. Further, the results contribute to ongoing discussions on bail reform, pretrial practice, and the movement to reduce local jail populations. Although the cost savings are not entirely clear, relatively higher risk defendants can be managed in the community and produce outcomes that are comparable to other defendants. The results also call into question the ability of matching procedures to construct appropriate counterfactuals in an era where risk assessment informs criminal justice decision-making. Weighting techniques outperformed matching strategies.

Business as Usual? Bail Decision Making and “Micro Politics” in an Australian Magistrates Court

Between the 1970s and 1990s, political scientists in the United States pursued a distinctive research program that employed ethnographic methods to study micro politics in criminal courts. This article considers the relevance of this concept for court researchers today through a case study about bail decision making in a lower criminal court in Australia. It describes business as usual in how decisions are made and the provision of pretrial services. It also looks at how traditionalists and reformers understood business as usual, and uses this as a critical concept to make visible micro politics in this court. The case study raises issues about organizational change in criminal courts since the 1990s, since there are fewer studies about plea bargaining and more about specialist or problem-solving courts. It is suggested that we need a new international agenda that can address change and continuity in criminal courts.

The Predictive Validity of the Post-Conviction Risk Assessment Among Federal Offenders

In the U.S. federal court system, the Probation and Pretrial Services Office (PPSO) uses a tool known as the Post-Conviction Risk Assessment (PCRA) to assess offender risk and identify challenges offenders face while under supervision. This article evaluates the PCRA and its components to determine its usefulness as a predictive tool for evaluating risk. Overall, we find that the PCRA is an effective tool for classifying offenders as it is currently designed, achieving a level of predictive validity comparable with its competitors. Notably, we also find that the PCRA effectively differentiates offenders early in supervision terms, and that its predictive power diminishes as time under supervision lengthens. Finally, the strength of PCRA classification appears to vary with offense type. The PCRA performs well for some offenses including drug, violent, and property offenses, but provides less utility in reliably predicting less common offenses.

A Study of Substance Use in Women in the West Texas U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services System

ABSTRACTPrevious studies have shown an association between substance use in the corrections population and, though the overall probation population has been declining, the percentage of women on probation has significantly increased. This study collected data on the factors associated with substance use and criminality among West Texas women who were sentenced to the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services System (USPPSS). Intake records for USPPSS adult women spanning 3 years were reviewed. Among all age distributions and demographics, alcohol use was found to be prevalent. A significant positive correlation was found between immediate and extended family use of alcohol or drugs. Approximately one third of women reported a lifetime history of psychiatric treatment and three fourths reported a lifetime history of emotional/verbal, physical, and/or sexual abuse. The significant association with alcohol and substance use among these women should be addressed when determining probation planning and social services. Furthermore, the high incidence of emotional/verbal, physical and/or sexual abuse, and suicidality in this population would recommend an approach that includes provision of adequate mental health services.

Lessons from the past: Remand detention and pre-trial services

A 1997 project established by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based non-government organisation, aimed to alleviate overcrowding in South African prisons by assisting magistrates in bail proceedings and thereby decreasing the number of admissions into awaiting trial facilities. Understanding the context in which the project operated leads to the important observation that efforts to launch and sustain discrete experiments in justice innovation will necessarily come under strain when faced with aggressively adverse macro circumstances, like the ones that faced Vera’s pre-trial project. However, the legal and social milieu has changed over the last twelve years. It is perhaps time to once again explore how innovations in criminal justice administration (a much-needed initiative) might best work in the various criminal justice management areas, given the discrete circumstances of each.

Electronic monitoring devices and data processing

Criminal justice authorities may wish to monitor or to control the location of particular person without resorting to imprisonment. An electronic monitoring device provides pretrial services, probation, or parole the chance to closely supervise convicted person by keeping track of where person are at or in some cases, determine if convicted person is consuming prohibited substances like alcohol or narcotics. Some systems provide tracing within predefined restricted areas. Systems like this are in use for different situations, for example before a criminal trial or after conviction. Authors described different ankle monitor systems that are in use, their advantages, disadvantages and data that collects. For each convicted person data from electronic monitor device is very important. Authors described machine learning method, which based on data could predict whether the convicted person will repeat the criminal offense or not. Methods like this works with hypothesis and gradient descent. At the end authors explored the role of these devices by the law of enforcement sanctions and measures outside the prison.

Longer-Term Impacts of Mental Health Courts: Recidivism Two Years After Exit.

This study compared recidivism among mental health court (MHC) participants and MHC-eligible defendants in traditional criminal court (TCC) two years after MHC exit or court disposition to investigate longer-term MHC impacts and effects beyond provision of treatment and services. Archival data from the pretrial services agency and MHC judges were used. Four measures of recidivism (any rearrest, number of rearrests, any felony arrest, and time to rearrest) were used to compare 408 MHC participants and 687 MHC-eligible defendants in TCC in the same judicial district. Both groups were provided individualized plans from the same package of services and supervision by the same pretrial services and community agencies. MHC completers and noncompleters were examined separately. Multivariate logistic analyses controlled for confounding variables. Reductions in recidivism were observed in all three groups from two years before the key arrest to two years after court exit or court disposition. The reduction was greatest among MHC completers: the proportion rearrested was smallest (25%), and completers had the lowest number of arrests (.42). The noncompleter group had the largest proportion of those rearrested (55%) and the highest number of arrests (1.21). When confounding variables were controlled, MHC completers, not noncompleters, differed significantly from the comparison group in two-year recidivism. MHC participation can reduce recidivism for an extended time after court exit and may have an impact on individuals who complete the program beyond the provision of treatment and services. Further study is needed to determine which MHC components may have this additional effect.

An Exploratory Assessment of Race and Gender-Specific Predictors of Failure to Appear in Court Among Defendants Released via a Pretrial Services Agency

Failure to appear (FTA) in court is an understudied and ubiquitous problem throughout the justice system and spans across all forms of pretrial release, whether financially or nonfinancially secured. Most offenders are released prior to the disposition of their case and many via government-funded pretrial services agencies. Few studies, however, have explored the factors associated with court appearance specific to race and gender groups. Relying on data culled from Dallas County, Texas, the present study assessed the predictors of FTA for defendants released via the county’s pretrial services agency and across various strata, including race and gender. Results of this exploratory analysis suggest that pretrial services defendants reporting indigence were more likely to fail to appear for all demographic groups, and felony defendants tended to appear at higher rates for most groups. Other predictors associated with failure to appear varied across gender and race including celerity, criminal history, marital status, and length of criminal involvement.