September 22, 2016
Dear Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors: I have read with great interest the Consensus Report on Optimal Pretrial Justice by the Santa Clara County Bail and Release Work Group, as well as the response to that report from the California Bail Agents Association, Industry Report on Working Group Recommendations on Bail Reform in Santa Clara. I appreciate the opportunity to provide my analysis of these reports. I’d like to preface my comments, however, with a brief background on the Pretrial Justice Institute. PJI is a 40-year-old national organization headquartered near Washington, DC that works with policymakers and justice system stakeholders from across the United States to advance safe, fair, and effective juvenile and adult pretrial practices. Among many other things, we play a leadership role in the Pretrial Justice Working Group, a consortium of national stakeholder organizations—including police, prosecutors, the judiciary, and others—who collaborate to support commonsense solutions to current pretrial challenges. We also created Smart Pretrial, a demonstration project funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs that is working with three competitively selected sites—Denver, Colorado; Yakima County, Washington; and the state of Delaware—to show how jurisdictions can develop, implement, and sustain fairer and more effective pretrial risk assessment and supervision strategies. And, finally, this past summer, we launched an online learning community called the University of Pretrial for stakeholders others interested in advancing pretrial reform based on legal and evidence-based strategies. Based on the strength of initiatives such as these, we are widely viewed as the nation’s leading resource on optimizing pretrial practice. Let me begin by remarking on the collaboration that was required by the members of the Santa Clara County Bail and Release Work Group, which included the judiciary, law enforcement, prosecution, defense, pretrial services, probation, jail administration, court administration, community-based groups and county government, to reach consensus on the impressive list of recommendations contained in its report. Achieving consensus on effective ways to balance the three goals of pretrial justice—maximizing release, maximizing public safety, and maximizing court appearance—takes courage and commitment, and the Work Group should be congratulated.
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