The Virginia Pre-Trial Data Project is an unprecedented, collaborative effort between numerous state and local agencies representing all three branches of government to examine matters related to the pre-trial process. The pre-trial period encompasses the various stages of a criminal case from the time a defendant is charged with an offense until the final disposition (trial and/or sentencing) of the matter. The Project was developed as a result of the Crime Commission’s study of the pre-trial process in order to determine how effective various pre-trial release mechanisms are at ensuring public safety and appearance at court proceedings.(*1)

As part of this Project, a cohort of 22,993 adult defendants charged with a criminal offense during a one-month period (October 2017) was identified and tracked during the pre-trial period until final case disposition or December 31, 2018, whichever came first. Two specific outcomes were tracked in order to evaluate the effectiveness of pre-trial release mechanisms:

• Public safety: measured by whether the defendant was arrested for a new in-state offense punishable by incarceration during the pre-trial period;(*2) and,

• Court appearance: measured by whether the defendant was charged with failure to appear during the pre-trial period.(*3)

A preliminary descriptive analysis was conducted of the 9,504 defendants in the cohort who were released on bond (personal recognizance, unsecured, and secured) during the pre-trial period. This preliminary analysis included whether the defendant was placed on pretrial services agency (PSA) supervision as a condition of bond and whether the criminal charges from the October 2017 contact event were heard in a locality served by a PSA during the October 2017 timeframe.

Two research questions were developed in order to assess the effectiveness of various pre-trial release mechanisms. Based upon the preliminary descriptive findings from the Project dataset, the answers to the two research questions are as follows:

Research Question #1: Did public safety and court appearance rates vary between defendants released on bond whose cases were heard in localities served by pretrial services agencies versus localities not served by pretrial services agencies?

• Public Safety Answer: The percentage of defendants released on bond who were arrested for a new in-state offense punishable by incarceration during the pre-trial period did not vary between localities served by pretrial services agencies and localities not served by these agencies.

• Court Appearance Answer: The percentage of defendants released on bond who were charged with FTA during the pre-trial period was slightly lower for defendants whose cases were heard in localities not served by pretrial services agencies than for defendants whose cases were heard in localities served by pretrial services agencies.

Research Question #2: For defendants released on bond whose cases were heard in localities served by pretrial services agencies, did public safety and court appearance rates vary between defendants receiving pretrial services agency supervision and defendants not receiving pretrial service agency supervision?

• Public Safety Answer: The percentage of defendants arrested for a new in-state offense punishable by incarceration during the pre-trial period was nearly identical among defendants released on “PR/unsecured bond with PSA supervision," defendants released on “secured bond only," and defendants released on “secured bond with PSA supervision." The percentage of defendants released on “PR/unsecured bond only" who were arrested for a new in-state offense punishable by incarceration during the pre-trial period was lower than the other three categories, which was not surprising given that these defendants typically had lower risk levels for new criminal activity.

• Court Appearance Answer: While defendants released on “secured bond with PSA supervision" had a higher risk of FTA, a lower percentage of these defendants were charged with FTA during the pretrial period as compared to defendants released on “PR/unsecured bond only," defendants released on “PR/unsecured bond with PSA supervision," or defendants released on “secured bond only." Further research will need to be conducted to determine why defendants released on “secured bond with PSA supervision" had a lower rate of FTA than any of the other group of defendants.

While aggregate findings are an excellent method for examining overall trends, this method does not fully account for variations across localities. Therefore, these statewide findings cannot be generalized to the individual locality level because they do not necessarily reflect the demographics, risk levels, or outcomes of specific localities. Considerable additional research is necessary in order to place these locality-specific findings in context.

Ultimately, when this Project is complete, the dataset will provide a baseline of pre-trial process measures across the Commonwealth and can serve as a source to inform policy decisions throughout the pre-trial process.

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(*1) Virginia State Crime Commission. (2017). Annual report: Pretrial services agencies, pp. 111-144. Available at https://rga.lis.virginia.gov/Published/2018/RD207/PDF. Virginia State Crime Commission. (2018). Annual report: Virginia Pre-Trial Data Project and pre-trial process. pp. 42-71. Available at  https://rga.lis.virginia.gov/Published/2019/RD247/PDF. 
(*2) The new in-state offense must have been committed during the pre-trial period. Also, Virginia is a Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Systems Agency signatory state and has agreed to adhere to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) CJIS policies, which include a prohibition on disseminating out-of-state criminal histories for noncriminal justice purposes. As such, out-of-state criminal histories were not included in the dataset of this Project.
(*3) Charges of failure to appear pursuant to Virginia Code §§ 19.2-128, 18.2-456, 16.1-69.24, 29.1-210, 46.2-936, 46.2-938, or, 19.2-152.4:1 prior to the final disposition of case. A methodology was not able to be developed to determine if all FTA charges were linked specifically to the October 2017 contact event. Staff was able to determine that approximately 80% of defendants charged with FTA during the pre-trial period did not have a pending charge at the time of the October 2017 contact event. Approximately 20% of defendants charged with FTA during the pre-trial period did have a pending charge at the time of their October 2017 contact event; however, it was unclear if the new FTA charge was related to the pending charge or to the October 2017 contact event. It was also determined that, at most, 6% of FTA charges during the pre-trial period may have been in relation to a civil matter (i.e., child support). Finally, if the defendant was arrested for a new offense during the pre-trial period and was subsequently charged with FTA during the pre-trial period, the methodology was not able to clearly determine whether the FTA charge was related to the October 2017 contact event or to the new offense.