National Pretrial Reporting Program

This project will assess the capacity of the 200 largest U.S. counties to provide case-level data to track cases from felony through case disposition. After assessing the capacity to provide data, RTI International will collect pretrial data from a sample of the 200 largest U.S. counties. The project will estimate trends among these 200 counties in the information used to make pretrial release decisions (e.g., prior criminal history, current offense), trends in pretrial release methods (e.g., financial conditions, surety bonds), and patterns of misconduct once released (e.g., missed court appearances, new arrests).

RTI will conduct data capacity surveys with the 200 largest counties in the United States. The data capacity survey will inform the collection of case-level pretrial records from 125 of the largest 200 counties. The pretrial data collection will be fielded in three phases: Phase 1 will include 10 pilot counties (5 that have experienced recent bail reforms and 5 that have not), Phase 2 will include the remaining 65 of the 75 largest counties, and Phase 3 will include 50 sampled counties among the remaining 200 largest counties.
The project leverages work that has been underway for the past decade, since the National Pretrial Reporting Program was last administered, that includes advances in data management and analysis technologies (e.g., secure cloud-based storage, parsing and matching algorithms) and standardization of court records (e.g., National Open Court Data Standards), and ongoing research in the pretrial field. The resulting files will measure critical data elements (e.g., pretrial release decision, violations) agreed upon with the Bureau of Justice Statistics within the sampled counties, provide weights to draw inferences about the full sample of 200 counties, and contribute to processes to expand data collection beyond the 200 largest counties.

Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined by applicable law.

CA/NCF