Pretrial Justice
We must reform every aspect of the pretrial system — from policing to bail; prosecution to public defense — to ensure that every person who has contact with the justice system is afforded equal treatment under the law.
We support policies that decarcerate, protect individuals’ constitutional rights, advance community safety, and promote racial justice.
On any given day, there are more than 730,000 people sitting in jails across America. Two-thirds have not been convicted of a crime and are trapped in jail simply because they can’t afford bail. The recent — and massive — surge in America’s pretrial jail populations has multiple roots: law enforcement agencies that arrest more people for minor offenses and over-police communities of color; prosecutors’ offices that seek harsh punishments and don’t collect data on the impact of those practices on families and communities; public defenders that are so overburdened they can’t possibly offer clients the zealous representation guaranteed in the Constitution; and judges who have little information with which to make life-altering decisions, so fall back on money bail to decide who gets released and who gets detained.
We work directly with courts, judges, prosecutors, and public defenders to implement and evaluate transformative new practices in pretrial justice. We have invested in a wide array of reforms, including delegated release for low-risk and low-charge defendants, use of nonfinancial conditions, early access to independent counsel, speedy trial, and court notifications.
Image: Stephanie Pope-Earley sorts through defendant files scored with risk-assessment software for municipal court Judge Jimmy Jackson Jr. on the first day of the software’s use in Cleveland in August 2017. (Dake Kang/The Associated Press)
