Restoring Accountability in Pretrial Release: The Philadelphia Pretrial Release Supervision Experiments, Final Report

摘要

This research examines the pretrial release process in the context of jail overcrowding in Philadelphia and considers the unique challenges associated with re-inventing pretrial release practices in anticipation of the end of years of court-imposed emergency crowding reduction measures. More specifically, the research focuses on the role of supervision in managing defendants released before adjudication and tests critical elements of pretrial release supervision in a series of related experiments and analyses. The experimental assessment of critical aspects of supervising defendants in the community was carried out within the context of implementing pretrial release guidelines in the Philadelphia court system. The pretrial release guidelines established for the first time the option of releasing to structured pretrial supervision certain medium-to-high risk defendants charged with relatively serious crimes. These were categories of defendants who, under former practices, would have been held in jail but under newly established procedures for supervision and accountability were believed to be amenable to management in the community. Under emergency release procedures, such defendants often were released with no supervision and then recorded high rates of pretrial misconduct (failure-to-appear or rearrest). The principal aim of Philadelphias initiative to re-engineer pretrial release policies was to maximize safe pretrial release by designing and employing effective decisionmaking tools and release options that would ensure attendance in court and minimize risks to the public safety while cases of released defendants were being adjudicated in the criminal courts.