LIBERTY AND JUSTICE PRETRIAL PRACTICES IN TEXAS

FINDING 4: The costs of a risk-informed pretrial release system are more than
offset by savings that occur when defendants are properly classified.
Administering a system
of risk-informed release
is costly. With financial
release, courts make a
subjective estimation of
defendants’ chance of
bond failure and set a
bail amount. Thereafter,
the mere threat of
monetary loss is
expected to incentivize
court appearance and
safety for most
defendants.
In contrast, the riskinformed
release system
$3,038
$263
$310
$469
$1,562
Financial Release System
(Tarrant County)
(n=102,193)
Figure 9. Total Pretrial Cost Per Defendant
$2,134
$406
$293
$133
$1,197
$433 $104
Risk-Informed Release System
(Travis County)
(n=61,114)
Pretrial Program Costs
Bail Failure Case Processing
Victim Costs
Detention Costs
Misclassification Costs
requires a staff of professionals to assess each defendants’ objective likelihood of success on bond. Pretrial
officers also provide risk-appropriate monitoring of moderate risk defendants to ensure they meet requirements
of the court until trial. Considering the expense of creating this specialized capacity, financial release may seem
more cost-effective. However, Figure 9 presents evidence to the contrary.
Pretrial program costs are substantially higher in the risk-informed system ($406 per defendant) than in the
financial release system ($263). Program costs include risk assessment, personal bond and surety bond
supervision, counseling and evaluation services (in Travis County’s personal bond system only), 10% of bail in the
case of surety bonds, and any costs for devices or testing required by the courts (See Table 4).
However, the improved decisions about whether to release or detain defendants made possible by risk
assessment produce significant returns, reducing overall costs by nearly one-third. The savings come primarily
from reductions in bond failure: case processing for bond forfeitures or new charges, victim costs, and
detention. Additional costs due to misclassification 27 are also just one-fourth as high where risk assessment is
used. The remainder of Finding 4 considers each of these cost elements in greater detail. 28
27
Misclassification costs are a statistically determined increment above or below actual costs reflecting potential savings
missed by jailing people who should have been released or releasing people who should have been detained. See Finding
4.5.
28
Additional county cost data is provided in Tables 1 and 2. The methodology and sources for cost estimation is provided in
the Technical Appendix.
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