One County's Success in Bail Bond Reform
May 13, 2020 by Andy Woodward
Launched a First-of-Its-Kind Integrated Pretrial Process for Collaborating in Real Time With Justice Partners
The State of California allocated funds to evaluate pretrial processes in local courts across the state with the goals of increasing safe, efficient pretrial release, implementing minimally restrictive monitoring of released individuals, expanding the use of pretrial assessment tools, and assessing any biases that factor in pretrial decision making. Alameda County was one of 16 counties granted funding to evaluate its pretrial process.
The county diligently worked with its pretrial stakeholders to establish core requirements deliverables to develop new features in its case management system. In just five months from when the funds were awarded, Alameda County Probation Department worked with Tyler Technologies to implement and launch a first-of-its-kind Enterprise Supervision pretrial component of its case management system.
With this new component in place, the county’s system now immediately notifies the office of an arrest, forwards the details of the crime in a queue where the officer can conduct a validated risk assessment and digitally forwards the findings to a pretrial judge who then decides to release or retain. Statistical analyses on arrest times, crimes, decisions, and many other criminal justice datapoints can be compiled for the courts to review and make decisions about expanding this effort.