Exam 5: Pretrial Release and Diversion: Suspending Progression Through the Formal Justice Process

Approximately 75 percent of all persons arrested for felony offenses who are released from detention fail to appear at trial.

Most arrested persons are booked into a county jail and held until they appear before a judge.

Research of the New York City Criminal Justice Agency (CJA) pretrial re-arrest among defendants showed that approximately 60% of those initially arrested on a drug charge were re-arrested for the same type of offense.

Recent research on criminal justice EBPs has found that intervention programs directed at reducing recidivism are most successful when they address specific needs and match the level of intensity to the level of risk.

The most comprehensive drug courts cost an average of $25,000 annually for each offender.

In a study of judicial discretion practices in Chicago, researchers found that unemployed offenders faced longer sentences than employed offenders.

Diversion programs give first-time offenders a second chance at having a clean criminal history by deferring the defendant from prosecution.

______ is a court issued bench warrant for a defendant's arrest because he or she has missed a scheduled court appearance.

______ is an offender management model that was implemented in the 1970s to treat drug-using offenders as part of an overall strategy to control drug use and associated criminal behaviors.

The American Bar Association (ABA) defines the goals of the pretrial release decision as "Providing due process to those accused of crime, maintaining the integrity of the judicial process by securing defendants for trial, and protecting victims, witnesses and the community from threat, danger or interference."

The history of structured pretrial release and diversion began in the 1960s in what came to be called the______.

Kimberly Rieger, Supervising U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services Officer for the Western District of Oklahoma, advises that students interested in U.S. Probation & Pretrial Services should complete an internship at a criminal justice agency while in college.

Screening for diversion involves assessing the individual risk factors and corresponding needs of the defendant rather than developing an intervention plan based only on the alleged crime.

Risk instruments to assess juvenile defendants may place greater emphasis on factors relating to family, school, and mental and physical development.

There are constitutional guarantees that bail should not be excessive and that the type of bail set for a defendant's pretrial release should be based in large part on the severity of the crime.

The two basic categories of pretrial diversion include treatment in lieu of prosecution and alternative sanction before judgment.

Pretrial release defendants are more successful in avoiding re-arrest for new crimes or technical violations, when compared to offenders released from prison.

Most pretrial programs use drug and alcohol testing as a supervision tool.