Mike Jones
Michael Jones is the criminal justice planning manager for the Jefferson County, Colorado, Criminal Justice Planning Unit (CJP), an agency responsible for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the county’s justice system. In 2007, amidst growing concern about the fairness and cost-effectiveness of the county’s money bail system, Jones and his colleagues began working with local government officials to develop the Jefferson County Bail Project. The project was designed to integrate research in bail decisions and reduce jail costs. I spoke with Jones about the development of the project and CJP’s cost analysis of various bond options.
Q. Why did Jefferson County decide to examine its pretrial system?
A. Local justice system decision-makers—including prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, law enforcement officials, and probation staff—had long recognized that the county’s pretrial system needed to change. In 2007, the Justice Oversight Committee—comprised of the chief judge, the chief probation officer, the justice services director, the sheriff, district attorney, County Administrator, and other senior system officials—decided to investigate the issue. At first, the committee members were somewhat unfamiliar with the details of system operations, but they knew that 1) the county’s jail population had been increasing at an unsustainable rate, leading to talks about options for dealing with that; 2) about half of the inmates were awaiting trial; and 3) detention costs about $65 per day while pretrial monitoring and supervision in the community costs only $2 per day. Many committee members also shared a belief that the county’s bail system was perceived as unfair because many defendants appeared to be jailed solely because of their inability to pay their bond.
Q. Did Jefferson County have a pretrial services program at the time?
A. Yes, Jefferson County has long had a pretrial services program that provided judges with information about defendants’ risk of failure to appear and threat to public safety, but the justice system also continued to rely on money bonds for a large proportion of defendants.
Q. Why did CJP decide to analyze the outcomes and costs of different bail options?
A. Before proposing any reforms, the Committee members wanted to know more about the outcomes and the costs of different bond options, including release on recognizance, cash bonds, and surety bonds (which involve bondsmen). They wanted to make sure that greater use of non-monetary bonds would not result in worse outcomes.
Q. What did CJP’s analysis show?
A. It showed that the type of bond had no bearing on whether a defendant would return to court and refrain from criminal activity. Defendants released on recognizance had similar court appearance, new arrest, and technical violation rates as defendants released on cash and surety bonds.
The type of bond did, however, impact jail use. With cash or surety bonds, fewer defendants posted bond, and when they did post it, it took them longer to post it than defendants with recognizance bonds. As a result, defendants with cash or surety bonds stayed much longer in jail, costing the county more money. The analysis showed that the defendants with recognizance bonds cost the county jail $104,000 annually; similar defendants with cash bonds cost $2.3 million; and similar defendants with surety bonds $4.1 million.
Q: How did you estimate the costs?
A. We estimated the annual jail costs for defendants with different types of bonds by multiplying the average daily cost of jail of $65 by the number of beds defendants required, by 365 days/year, and sorted them by bond type. For example, we estimated that defendants with cash-only bonds consumed about 96 jail beds per day, so we multiplied 96 by $65 by 365 days to obtain $2.3 million.
Q. How did you measure the outcomes?
A. We studied the outcomes of defendants handled by two judges with very different bail-setting practices but the same types of cases. One judge released defendants on their own recognizance 52 percent and used surety bonds only 16 percent of the time, while the other judge released defendants on recognizance 37 percent of the time and set surety bonds 35 percent of the time. We compared defendants assigned to these judges on court appearance, new arrest, and technical violation rates.
Q. How were the results used?
A. After the study, the chief judge issued an order eliminating the money bond schedule. Now, if judges do use monetary bonds, they are more likely to issue cash bonds than surety bonds because cash bonds produce the same outcomes with less detention time. These changes bring Jefferson County more in line with the bail standards set by the American Bar Association, favoring release on recognizance over monetary bonds.
Q. What were the challenges and limitations of this analysis?
A. If we could have compared our groups using random assignment, which is considered the gold standard of evaluation, we would have had even greater confidence in our results. Also, we had a difficult time finding large, matching samples of defendants with different bond conditions because the judges set bonds however they wanted and not according to some predetermined guidelines (e.g., more or less of certain types of bonds).
Q. Where would you like to take this research next?
A. We would like to further estimate the costs and the cost-savings of the different bail options, using marginal in addition to average jail costs. Marginal costs describe how total operating costs change with levels of activity, and could represent a more accurate measure of the cost savings that would result from having fewer defendants in jail. We would also like to calculate the costs to the whole system and society of failing to appear in court and new crimes that released defendants might commit.
Q. What tips would you share with researchers and practitioners who want to analyze the costs and outcomes of pretrial decisions?
A. I recommend prepping the audience ahead of time, inviting the stakeholders to participate in the research, and making the process transparent. If you do this, stakeholders are more likely to believe the results and use them later. Also, analyze not only the justice system’s monetary costs and savings, but also the costs that go beyond money. Have a broad definition of cost, one that includes money as well as time, justice, and social factors.
This month, CBKB highlights information about the costs and benefits of pretrial detention, release, and services.
Related posts:
- Guest blog: The costs and consequences of more policing
- Guest blog: Measuring victim costs to inform justice policy: What is the cost of not sleeping?
- Assessing the costs and benefits of pretrial services programs
- CBKB’s June Focus: Pretrial Detention
- Economics of pretrial release: Current research and future directions
