First Appearance

January 2020

From the States

• NCSL recently interviewed Charleston County Assistant Sheriff Mitch Lucas to discuss how Criminal Justice Coordinating Councils can bring together local stakeholders and serve as a link between state policymakers and local governments. Also new from NCSL, an overview of police-mental health collaborations.
• A package of bills changing the way pretrial release works in Wisconsin was the subject of a recent public hearing. The bills are the assembly companions to the bipartisan legislation that came from the Study Committee on Bail and Conditions of Pretrial Release. More information about the study committee, including NCSL testimony and materials, can be found here.
• Early last year, Maine Senator Lisa Keim (R) submitted a letter to the legislature’s Government Oversight Committee requesting a review of the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services and the Indigent Legal Services program. An evaluation was released in April. Now the committee has authorized an investigation into the state’s indigent defense system and legislators have promised reform in 2020.
• The Nevada Legislature doesn’t have a regular session in 2020, but legislators on a new interim study committee are meeting for the first time in the new year to study issues related to pretrial release.
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) has recently been voicing his support for pretrial reforms, tweeting about a $150,000 bond being set in a case that involved the death of Nassau Bay Police Sgt. Kaila Sullivan, and more recently sharing a link to a Dallas Morning News editorial calling attention to the need for pretrial reforms in Dallas.
• The Massachusetts Special Commission on Bail Reform has issued a new report recommending that the state keep cash bail, at least for now. Lawmakers reportedly felt they needed to give more time for recently implemented reforms to go into effect so they could understand “what was working, what wasn’t, what the impacts were.”

The Cache

• National Judicial Opioid Task Force: Final Report (Nov. 2019)
• Pretrial Justice Institute: Smarter Pretrial Solutions-Responding to Technical Violations (Dec. 2019)
• Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago: Access to Justice: A Cross-Disability Perspective on Reducing Jail Incarceration (Nov. 2019)
• Council on Criminal Justice: Trends in Correctional Control by Race and Sex (Dec. 2019)
• Council of State Governments Justice Center: Behavioral Health Diversion Interventions: Moving from Individual Programs to a Systems-Wide Strategy (Oct. 2019)
• The Safety + Justice Challenge and Upturn, Inc.: Civil Rights and Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments (Dec. 2019)
• The Vera Institute of Justice: People in Jail in 2019 (Dec. 2019)

In the News

• Philanthropies: “Don’t give up on criminal justice reform.” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Director of Criminal Justice Laurie Garduque and Arnold Ventures’ Vice President for Criminal Justice James Cadogan both wrote letters to the editor of The New York Times citing a false choice between justice and safety, and the positive effects of cash bail reform.
• Chris Kaiser, advocacy director of the ACLU of Louisiana, recently penned an op-ed saying the notion of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ can be an empty promise in Louisiana.
• Many states are grappling with lack of beds and long waitlists for individuals who have been determined to be incompetent to stand trial. Wait times can stretch into months in many states and the jails where these individuals are held are generally not prepared to meet the needs of these individuals. In Colorado, a new pilot program is trying to change the status quo. Officials from Colorado recently visited Miami, hoping to learn from the similar experiences and solutions put in place by their Florida counterparts.
• The National Association of Counties has recently called on counties to support two bills in Congress that would protect the continuity of Medicaid coverage for pretrial detainees, ensuring health care services are provided to an individual who is in custody pending disposition of charges. Jail and county officials in Harvey County, Kansas are all in favor of the legislation.
• The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently called for Missouri to join the majority of states in setting basic standards of care for local jail inmates.

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This newsletter was created with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge, which seeks to reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails.