LIBERTY AND JUSTICE PRETRIAL PRACTICES IN TEXAS

CONCLUSIONS
Stakeholders in Texas and the nation are increasingly questioning the use of financial bail as a means of pretrial
release. After reviewing the major concerns about the current bail system, the Texas Judicial Council’s Criminal
Justice Committee issued an October 2106 report articulating an eight-point reform agenda. They then asked
PPRI to gather new data from Texas jurisdictions to further inform their leadership on this issue. The two-part
study combined a multiple case study analysis of two jurisdictions with a statewide survey of pretrial
practitioners and judges.
The following paragraphs consider the study’s implications for each of the Committee’s major
recommendations. In general, the research finds the steps for bail reform prioritized by the judiciary are
responsive to the challenges identified, can be feasibly implemented, and are likely to yield significant benefits
for jurisdictions.
Recommendation 1: The Legislature should require defendants arrested for jailable misdemeanors and
felonies to be assessed using a validated pretrial risk assessment prior to appearance before a magistrate under
Article 15.17, Code of Criminal Procedure.
Key Findings:
Judges agree that valid risk assessment is needed. Those surveyed generally believe tools currently
available to guide pretrial decisions are inadequate. As a result, they rely heavily upon subjective
judgments. Two-thirds of judicial respondents are not fully confident that their pretrial release decisions
promote public safety or court appearance, and more than half named validated risk assessment as a
specific need.
The study shows valid risk data can improve judges’ ability to correctly classify defendants. Without risk
information available, the financial bail system released 12% more potentially dangerous people and
detained 24% more people who could have been safely released. Risk assessment tools give judicial
officers better information to make the right custody decision.
A system of risk-informed pretrial release can be costly, though this study finds it is money well-spent.
After accounting for the total expenses of risk assessment and supervision paid by counties and
defendants, costs are 1.5 times higher where risk-informed classification is used. However, all other
pretrial expenses are reduced by a substantial margin. Lower rates of new criminal activity among
people on bond bring down costs related to criminal processing (i.e., arrest, prosecution, court hearings,
and indigent defense), victimization, and detention due to re-arrest. There are also fewer post-arrest jail
days and lower net costs due to misclassification in the risk-informed system. Overall costs are one-third
lower where pretrial risk assessment is used.
Moreover, the evidence suggests use of an automated statistical algorithm can achieve similar results at
lower cost. The ORAS-PAT tested here gathers information through interviews. However, the study
finds nearly identical custody recommendations can be achieved using a “no interview” assessment
using information that is widely available in most county criminal record systems. The Arnold
Foundation’s Public Safety Assessment-Court is one such protocol that has been validated in over 300
55