Every year, nearly 5.6 million Americans must navigate the pretrial period following an arrest and pretrial release. This includes navigating several compliance-centric court and pretrial monitoring rules, without significant resources to do so. Rarely do individuals have: 

• Transportation 

• Childcare  

• Ability to take time off from work.  

When individuals struggle to follow all the rules and attend court as scheduled, they risk the court sending them back to jail while the system processes their case. Without courts actively reducing the barriers for people to attend court and providing people resources to get to court, individuals will continue returning to jail during their case processing for behaviors that are not new crimes.

Building a support-oriented court system requires both reimagining court policies and offering extensive resources to individuals to help them get to court.  

JSP collaborates with judges, court administrators and staff, prosecutors, defense attorney, pretrial agencies, mental health providers, and community organizations to reimagine how the pretrial period operates in their local communities. This includes: 

• Challenging the number of hearings and the need for in-person hearings 

• Rethinking bench warrant practices  

• Transforming compliance monitoring to court attendance coaching.  

• Implementing shelter court and make-up dockets  

• Building capacity to offer extensive resources and case management to individuals who consistently and persistently miss court. 

Combined, our work helps local partners ensure the pretrial period is fair, efficient, and equitable.