Project Description

In July 2021, Harris County Pretrial Services (HCPS) reached a historic high in the number of defendants under its supervision, with over 32,500 active clients. Growth in the number of active clients began after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic; the active client count remains high today. HCPS’s goals are to provide accurate information to assist judicial officers with making informed pretrial release decisions, to monitor defendants released on bond to promote compliance with court orders and court appearances, and to support public safety. Pretrial Services offers supervision ranging from administrative monitoring to intensive supervision, such as electronic monitoring and alcohol monitoring. The agency collects financial affidavit information for use in decisions regarding the appointment of counsel and ability to pay bail, and it completes a pretrial assessment on all individuals appearing for their initial appearance. Pretrial Services has implemented a new case management system, presenting an opportunity to use the abundance of information collected by HCPS to support the use of justice system options to enhance pretrial outcome measures.

This project features a one-time investment to assess HCPS’ data capacity for analytics, establish pretrial metrics with the ability to measure outcomes by charge, condition, or risk, and create an analytics database with which other Harris County justice agencies may interface. The primary use of pretrial metrics is providing information to the County and to the courts, but pretrial data analytics—particularly when used collaboratively with other stakeholders’ data—could also assist in the reduction of the local jail pretrial population and help stakeholders identify defendants who may benefit from alternatives to detention or from diversion. Additionally, this type of analysis will provide the feedback necessary to support sequential bail review outcomes.