Building a Responsive Pretrial Supervision System in Harris County, TX
Project Feature
As state and local jurisdictions seek to release more people from jail to await trial in the community under the least restrictive conditions, government stakeholders are questioning how to maximize the freedom of clients released without reproducing the harms of pretrial incarceration. In adopting changes to pretrial release policies, pretrial supervision agencies have faced larger caseloads and more judicial requests for burdensome and expensive requirements such as mandated client drug testing and electronic monitoring devices. Harris County, Texas is one example of a jurisdiction managing these implementation challenges, as it saw a 770% increase in the number of individuals on pretrial supervision since 2017. The GPL helped the county test an approach to better manage this influx of clients by reducing the use of restrictive court conditions placed on clients released to the community pretrial. The pilot in Harris County sought to address and right-size that growing caseload by involving both pretrial staff and judges in reviewing condition placement within 30-120 days to adjust condition intensity and frequency. Through this pilot, from October 2020 to June 2022, the agency successfully adjusted supervision conditions for over 2,200 clients with no changes in client compliance or rearrest rates during that time. Read this project feature to learn more.