December 2022
Jail Charge Data Analysis and Jail Reduction Strategies for
Douglas County, Kansas
Bea Halbach-Singh, Sarah Minion, Jennifer Peirce, Sandhya Kajeepeta, Jason Q. Ng
and Jasmine Heiss
Table of Contents
– Executive Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………2
– Background & data sources………………………………………………………………………………………4
– Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………………………….5
– Glossary…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………6
– Key findings……………………………………………………………………………………………………………7
1. Demographics of people admitted to jail…………………………………………………………7
2. Pretrial incarceration…………………………………………………………………………………..11
3. Jail admissions for court system failures and municipal charges…………………….24
4. Systemic issues driving multiple bookings into the jail…………………………………..33
5. Admissions for people serving county and state sentences……………………………..35
– Key takeaways and policy recommendations…………………………..……………………………….37
– Summary of recommendations by decision point…………………………..…………………………52
– Data collection & evaluation recommendations…………………………..……………………………56
– Appendix: methodology…………………………..…………………………………………………………….59
1
Executive Summary
Like many counties across the country, Douglas County, Kansas has experienced a dramatic
increase in its jail population over the past several decades, with the per capita jail incarceration
rate growing over 70 percent between 1990 and its peak in 2018. In response to concerns about
this continued growth, its costs to taxpayers, and its effect on the community, Douglas County
stakeholders sought the assistance of the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) in analyzing the local
drivers of jail incarceration and developing strategies to reverse this trend and advance public
safety. Since 2019, Vera has used publicly available data to provide research and policy guidance
to various Douglas County stakeholders. For this report, Vera used data that is publicly available
from the Douglas County “Bookings and Offenses Dashboard” and from the Douglas County
Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC). The data in this report include people released
from the jail between January 1, 2017 - December 31, 2021 – just over 10,000 people in total.
Key Findings
● Most bookings into jail are for minor, nonviolent charges, including charges related to
substance use, supervision violations, and poverty.
● The Douglas County jail population is primarily driven by pretrial incarceration.
● Failures to appear (FTA), probation violations, remands and municipal charges are
significant drivers of the Douglas County jail population, together accounting for just
over half of all jail admissions and bed-days from 2017 to 2021.
○ FTAs were the most common top charge for overall admissions: they made up 21
percent of total admissions and accounted for 12 percent of bed-days. Overall, 40
percent of admissions in which FTA was the top charge were classified as traffic
cases from either municipal or district court–and in over a third of those cases,
the people jailed lived in another county.
○ Probation violations are the second-highest contributor to jail bed-days and the
fifth-most-common top charge.
○ Almost a third of admissions with only municipal charges were classified as
traffic cases.
● Overall, violent charges contributed to 21 percent of pretrial jail bookings.
○ Domestic violence (DV) charges represent a majority of admissions with a violent
top charge. 45 percent of admissions with a DV top charge were dismissed by a
judge or not filed by a prosecutor.
● The majority of admissions for drug-related charges were for drug possession rather
than drug manufacture or delivery, and a substantial portion were facing low-level
charges.
● DUI is a strong driver of pretrial jail admissions but has less of an impact on bed-days.
● About 40 percent of people were admitted two or more times; these individuals made up
70 percent of admissions and 78 percent of bed-days.
● Black people represent just 6 percent of the county population aged 15 or older, but 23
percent of jail bed-days and 18 percent of jail admissions.
2
Recommendations
● To alleviate jail bookings for low-level offenses, the county should standardize and
monitor implementation of alternatives to traditional arrest and booking, such as
citations in lieu of arrest, co-response and/or civilian response teams, and a review of the
municipal code.
● To reduce pretrial lengths of stay and a system where those who can afford bail are
released and those who cannot stay in jail, the courts should expand the use of
non-monetary conditions of release at the earliest point possible and eliminate the use of
a bail schedule. This may also mitigate some of the racially disparate impacts of
detention.
● To reduce the number of people who cycle in and out of jail on substance use charges, the
county should enact a public health approach that recognizes the reality of relapse and
takes an evidence-based harm reduction approach, investing in a range of necessary
services.
● To reduce the number of DUI admissions and lessen the rate of drunk driving in the
community, the county should expand accessible public transportation options and
divert first-time DUI arrests to a sobering center with referrals to services.
● To address high rates of incarceration for FTAs, the county should develop additional
court resources that help increase appearance and reduce bookings for nonappearance in
court by enabling officers to reschedule people with FTAs for new court dates on the spot
using either a mobile phone app or filling out a brief rescheduling form.
● To prevent the criminalization of poverty, the county should eliminate the use of
financial sanctions, eliminate incarceration as a response to non-payment, and conduct
indigency hearings at the earliest stage possible so that court debt may be waived.
● To preserve Due Process, the county should ensure all individuals in both municipal and
district court have access to adequate counsel at the earliest stage possible.
● To reduce the number of people booked on probation violations, the county should
prohibit incarceration for technical violations (e.g. a missed appointment, a positive
urinalysis, missed payment of fees, etc).
● To repair harm done to victims and hold individuals accountable, the county should
establish or expand a diversion policy that directs prosecutors to divert people to
community-based restorative justice programs when both parties agree to participate.
Implementation
There is immense opportunity for Douglas County agencies to expand on the COVID-era jail
population reductions by implementing some of the evidence-based reforms recommended in
this report. To manage implementation, the CJCC coordinator should lead individual working
groups that define parameters and track implementation over time for each commitment that
has generated alignment. These working groups should be composed of local government actors,
agency representatives, community members, and the senior data analyst.
3
Background & Data Sources
The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy
organization focusing on criminal legal system issues. Since 2019, Vera has used publicly
available data to provide research and policy guidance to various Douglas County stakeholders
on ways to reduce jail incarceration. In 2022, Vera presented preliminary analysis of county data
and policy recommendations on several occasions to the Racial Justice Working Group
Subcommittee of the Douglas County Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee (CJCC), as well
as to several system actors and community groups.
This memo presents findings from an analysis of data from Douglas County Correctional
Facility’s jail management system. Vera used data that is publicly available from the Douglas
County “Bookings and Offenses Dashboard” and from the Douglas County CJCC. The data in
this report include people released from the jail between January 1, 2017 - December 31, 2021 –
just over 10,000 people in total.
One limitation of the current jail bookings database, which underlies the dashboard, is
that it lists the charges noted in a person’s file at booking, but does not specify which charge is
the most serious and is thus likely the primary factor determining a person’s arrest, status in jail,
and subsequent trajectory in the system. This is often called the “top charge” or “controlling
charge,” based on the relative severity of the charges associated with each booking. Looking at
top charges separately from all charges that people in jail are facing can provide a clearer picture
of the behaviors and enforcement priorities that are contributing to jail admissions and lengths
of stay in jail. For example, less serious charges (like trespassing) may be among the most
common charges for people booked into the jail, but they are less frequently the most serious
charge on a booking. So, the “top charges” list is a subset of the overall charges list. This report
uses a methodology based on Kansas law and local practice to determine which charge is the
top/controlling charge in a booking with multiple charges. For further details on this method
please see the methodology appendix at the end of this memo.
A further limitation of the analysis is that the originating charge is not available in the
jail management system for people who were admitted for a number of charges that do not
typically, by themselves, constitute new criminal charges–including failures to appear,
probation and parole violations, bond failures, remands, and warrants or detainers. Throughout
this document, we refer to these types of charges as “administrative charges.” Generally, we
assumed that if one of these charges was accompanied by a new criminal, municipal or traffic
charge on a booking, that the new charge was driving the arrest rather than the administrative
charge. If the administrative charge was listed alone, or only accompanied by other
administrative charges, it was considered to be the most serious charge–and the person was
considered to be booked for an administrative charge alone. This limitation affects the top
charge classification in that, for people admitted on administrative charges, we are not able to
assess the severity of their originating charges–for example, to distinguish between someone
who was admitted for a failure to appear on a previous felony charge versus a previous traffic
charge. However, this limitation is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the booking with the
originating charge would presumably still be represented in the analysis the first time they were
booked.
4
Using the top charge analysis, this report focuses on the types of charges underlying both
jail admissions and longer stays. It also presents breakdowns of charge types and length of stay
by demographic traits (race, ethnicity, gender), legal status (pretrial, sentenced, probation or
parole violation), court type (district, municipal), case type (criminal, traffic, other) and other
categories. It provides deeper analysis of the charge types that show up most frequently as top
charges, such as failure to appear, violent charges, and driving under the influence, and on
several types of charges for which potential policy changes are within the purview of local actors,
such as municipal ordinance violations, probation violations, and drug possession.
This analysis is based on data about all people who were released from the Douglas
County jail during the five-year period from 2017 to 2021, meaning only bookings that have been
completed. By focusing on bookings for which both admission and release dates are known, we
ensure the analysis is based on complete information about length of stay and release reasons.
More information about the dataset, its limitations, and how the data was cleaned and prepared
for analysis can be found in the methodology appendix at the bottom of this report. The second
part of the report provides recommendations for future data collection and management (to
enable ongoing analysis along these lines) and for policy changes that could help to reduce the
use of the jail.
Acknowledgements
Vera is grateful to Dr. Matt Cravens, Senior Data Analyst for the CJCC, for providing the
data used in this analysis with permission from the Sheriff’s Office, and for his generosity in
answering questions about the jail management system. Vera would also like to thank the
Douglas County Racial and Ethnic Disparities Working Group for inviting us to participate in a
series of work sessions where many of the policies outlined in this memo were developed.
Specifically, we’d like to thank Pam Weigand, Chuck Epp, Jill Jolicoeur, Jolene Anderson,
LeRonda Roome, Gary Bunting, Tamara Cash, Shaye Downing, and Bryce Hirschman. We’d also
like to thank Sheriff Jay Armbrister, Chief Rick Lockhart, District Attorney Suzanne Valdez and
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Josh Seiden, County Commissioner Shannon Portillo, County
Commissioner Shannon Reid, City Commissioner Amber Sellars, City Commissioner Bart
Littlejohn, City Commissioner Brad Finkeldei, Mayor Courtney Shipley, Craig Owens, Sam
Alison-Natale, Shannon Young, Municipal Prosecuting Attorney Beth Hafoka and Vicki Stanwix
for sitting down with us to talk about current practice and helping us better understand the
aspects of the system that data alone cannot capture. We’d also like to thank the members of the
Justice Matters Criminal Justice Reform Working Group for their tireless work to ensure efforts
to make Douglas County a safer and more just community continue moving forward.
5
Glossary of Key Terms
The following key terms are used frequently throughout this report:
Jail admissions: the number of individual bookings into jail within the time period covered by
this analysis.
Jail bed-day: each day that a person spends in jail, or a fraction of a day for people who are
released the same day as they are booked into jail. The number of bed-days is summed across all
the individuals that were booked into the jail during the time period covered by this analysis to
analyze which types of admission contribute to shorter/longer jail stays.
Judicial status: the court status of each charge on a booking at the time a person was admitted
to jail–for instance, “pretrial,” which means an individual is legally innocent and has not been
convicted or taken a plea, or “sentenced to county time,” which means an individual has either
been convicted of or plead guilty to the charge and are serving a custodial sentence in the jail.
Court type: whether each charge originated in district or municipal court. Douglas County has
one district court and three municipal courts—one each for Baldwin City, Eudora, and Lawrence.
District court is divided into 8 divisions that each handle different types of criminal, civil, and
juvenile cases, while the municipal courts primarily handle violations of city ordinances,
including parking and traffic violations.
Case type: whether the case was classified as criminal, traffic, or other, based on top charge.
Top charge: the most serious charge among the charges listed on a person’s booking (see the
methodology appendix for more details). Note that this represents the charge listed at booking,
which may differ from what a person is ultimately charged with by the District Attorney and
potentially convicted of.
6
Key Findings
1. Demographics of people admitted to jail
People were released from the Douglas County jail over 21,000 times from 2017 to
2021.
1
This number represents 10,376 unique individuals–some of whom were sent to jail
multiple times. Of those, at least 6,264 individuals (60 percent) were Douglas County residents
at the time of their arrest.
2
Excluding the college-age population, police booked 1 out of 11
Douglas County residents aged 25 to 54 (prime working age) between 2017 and 2021.
3
Almost 1
in 3 prime-working-age Black men, and almost 1 in 6 prime-working-age Latino men, were
booked into jail.
Figure 1
White people made up the majority of jail admissions and jail-bed days, which reflects the
demographic makeup of the resident population in Douglas County. However, as shown in
Figure 2, Black people represent just 6 percent of the county population aged 15 or
older, but 23 percent of jail bed-days and 18 percent of jail admissions. The
3
To account for the fact that Douglas County is home to the University of Kansas and many students have
a shorter residency period, the college-age population is excluded from these statistics, which use county
residents aged 25 to 54 as the denominator. Percentage of Douglas county population is based on data
from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual County and Resident Population Estimates by Age, Sex, Race, and
Hispanic Origin: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2019. See United States Census Bureau, County Population by
Characteristics: 2010-2019 (Washington, DC: United States Census Bureau, 2021).
2
This count excludes 302 people who had missing info for residence and who are most likely homeless
people in Douglas County.
1
The dataset is based on a cohort of people who were released during 2017-2021, some of who may have
been admitted prior to 2017.
7
disparities in jail admissions suggest that law enforcement officers are more heavily policing
and/or more frequently deciding to make arrests when interacting with Black people relative to
the general population.
4
Figure 2
The fact that the disparities are even sharper for the proportion of bed-days than the proportion
of admissions indicates that Black people are staying in jail longer than white people. This could
be the result of money bail being set more frequently, higher bail amounts and/or greater
difficulty affording money bail. Black people could also be spending more time in jail on
supervision revocations or serving longer sentences.
5
The data also suggests that Latino and
5
Several studies have found that people of color are treated more harshly than white people at each stage
during the pretrial process, beginning with the initial release decision, followed by the decision to set
financial or non-financial conditions, and then if financial conditions are set, in the bail amount. These
biases result in a 10-25 percent higher likelihood of pretrial detention for Black and Latinx people than
white, and higher median bond amounts. Controlling for other factors, a Black person accused of a crime
is more likely to have bail set, and on average, it is set in an amount $10,000 or higher than that of a white
person. See Wendy Sawyer, “How race impacts who is detained pretrial,” Prison Policy Initiative, October
9, 2019, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/10/09/pretrial_race/; and one study found that Black
people accused of drug offenses were 80 percent less likely to receive a recognizance bond than white
4
Studies show that racial disparities in the criminal legal system begin at the first point of officer
interaction. “Pretextual stops,” or a stop that an officer makes for one reason (e.g. broken tail light) during
which they look for evidence of additional crimes (e.g. possession of a controlled substance), are a key
driver of inequity. See Vera Institute of Justice, Motion for Justice, accessed October, 2022
https://motionforjustice.vera.org/.
8
Native American people are disproportionately admitted to the jail compared to the resident
population. However, common misclassification and smaller numbers make it more difficult to
accurately measure disparities for these groups of people, as well as for people who identify with
multiple races and ethnicities.
6
Women made up 27 percent of admissions to the jail from 2017 to 2021. From 2000
to 2019, the women’s incarceration rate in Douglas County almost tripled, from 29 to 84 women
in jail for every 100,000 working-age residents.
7
Most women were admitted to jail for low-level,
nonviolent offenses: 35 percent of women’s admissions from 2017 to 2021 had an administrative
charge as the top charge, and 27 percent had a nonperson, nonviolent misdemeanor as the top
charge.
8
Nationally, women detained on unaffordable bail pretrial have a median annual income
of $11,071, making even comparatively “low” bond amounts just as out of reach as higher
bonds.
9
Many women held on bail are the primary caregivers of minor children, which can
create additional pressure to take a guilty plea just to be released from jail in order to care for
their families.
10
Douglas county residents aged 25 to 54 (the prime working-age population) made
up 71 percent of jail admissions and 78 percent of jail bed-days. The fact that
working-age people make up such a large portion of the local jail population raises questions
about how local incarceration may be creating barriers to employment and economic mobility
and further exacerbating existing racial disparities in income and economic outcomes. Pretrial
detention has been shown to have negative impacts on labor market outcomes, including a
decreased likelihood of formal sector employment and increased likelihood of receiving
10
Although recent national data on this subject is not available, a study using data from a 2002 Survey of
Inmates in Local Jails conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that ⅔ of women who were
unable to meet bail conditions were mothers of minor children. For a discussion of this analysis see
Wendy Sawyer, How does unaffordable money bail affect families? (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy
Initiative, 2018).
9
Bernadette Rabuy and Daniel Kopf, Detaining the Poor: How money bail perpetuates an endless cycle
of poverty and jail time (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2016).
8
Administrative charges are those that do not typically, by themselves, constitute new criminal charges.
The most frequently recorded charges in this category were failure to appear and violations of probation
and parole. Generally, we assumed that unless an administrative charge was accompanied by a new
criminal or municipal charge, it was a technical violation such as missing a meeting with a probation
officer, a positive drug test, or non-payment of court fines and fees. However, it is possible that a person’s
supervision would be revoked after being charged with a new offense, but the offense may not be filed
until later, which would make it appear like a technical violation in the data. In other cases, a person
might be arrested on a new charge that the prosecutor later decides not to file.In some cases, this might be
because the person would spend roughly the same amount of time incarcerated on a technical violation,
but the prosecutor would not need to prove the violation beyond a reasonable doubt.
7
Vera Institute of Justice, Incarceration Trends, accessed December 2021,
https://trends.vera.org/state/KS/county/douglas_county.
6
For a comparison of how Hispanic people are represented in criminal justice data across U.S. states, see
Sarah Eppler-Epstein, Annie Gurvis, and Ryan King, The Alarming Lack of Data on Latinos in the
Criminal Justice System, (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, December 2016).
people. See Tina L. Freiburger, Catherine D. Marcum and Mari Pierce, “The Impact of Race on the Pretrial
Decision,” American Journal of Criminal Justice 35, no. 1: 76-86.
9
employment- and tax-related government benefits compared to people in similar circumstances
who are initially released.
11
Douglas County residents between the ages of 18 to 24 made up 23 percent of
admissions and 15 percent of bed-days.
12
Lawrence is home to the University of Kansas, a
campus with an enrollment of 22,500 students in Fall 2021.
13
Students represent a large share of
the county population, although not all the people in the 18-24 age group are attending the
university. When arrested, most people in this age group were booked for low-level, nonviolent
charges: 31 percent of admissions for this age group from 2017 to 2021 had a nonviolent
misdemeanor as the top charge (primarily driving under the influence), and 28 percent had an
administrative charge as the top charge (most commonly failure to appear).
Figure 3
13
We looked at enrollment data by physical campus, see The University of Kansas - Analytics,
Institutional Research & Effectiveness, “Enrollment Dashboard: Fall Enrollment,”
https://aire.ku.edu/enrollment.
12
Numbers differ from those presented in figure 3, which presents admissions and bed-days for groups
that match age groupings provided in the U.S. Census Bureau data.
11
Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, and Crystal S. Yang, “The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future
Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges,” American Economic Review 108
no. 2 (2018): 201-40.
10
2. Pretrial incarceration
The Douglas County jail population is primarily driven by pretrial incarceration.
Pretrial admissions (including for pending charges and for charges not ultimately filed)
accounted for 74 percent of admissions and 44 percent of bed-days, the largest portion of total
bed days.
14
Figure 4
14
Charges with a status of “pending referral to prosecutor” and “charge not filed by prosecutor” are also
considered to be pretrial in this analysis. According to discussions with an employee in the Douglas
County Sheriff’s Office conducted in Spring 2022, when a person is arrested on a new charge, the charge is
initially labeled in the jail management system as “pending referral to prosecutor.” The status is later
changed to “pretrial” if the prosecutor decides to pursue the charge, or “charge not filed by prosecutor” if
not. 54.2 percent of charges were labeled pretrial, 14.8 percent were pending referral, and 5.4 percent
were not filed by the prosecutor.
11
What is driving pretrial jail admissions?
The majority of people admitted to the jail pretrial (79 percent) had a nonviolent top charge, and
73 percent were facing a misdemeanor or failure to appear top charge.
15
Figure 5 shows the
breakdown of pretrial admissions and bed-days by charge class. Although felony charges only
made up 21 percent of pretrial admissions, they accounted for 62 percent of bed-days. By
comparison, misdemeanors accounted for a far greater share of pretrial admissions (49 percent)
and only 17 percent of bed-days. This finding is not surprising, given that people who are facing
more serious charges tend to have higher bail amounts set and stay in jail longer, whereas
people facing less serious charges might be able to come up with bail more quickly. Research
from other places has shown that despite decreasing admissions, increasing lengths of stay have
kept jail populations high, and a small number of people tend to account for the greatest portion
of bed-days.
16
A comprehensive strategy to reduce jail populations must include strategies to
both reduce jail admissions and address long lengths of stay.
Figure 5
Figure 6 shows the top 15 most common charges driving pretrial admissions into the jail.
Together, failures to appear (FTAs), public administration charges (a group of charges related to
tampering or interfering with the work of government officers, including law enforcement and
corrections staff), drug possession, theft, other property offenses, trespass, and traffic offenses
(excluding vehicular homicide) made up almost half (47 percent) of pretrial jail admissions.
16
See Jake Horowitz and Tracy Velázquez, Why Hasn’t the Number of People in U.S. Jails Dropped,
(Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, March 27, 2020); and Melanie Close, Olive Lu, Shannon
Tomascak, Preeti Chauhan, Erica Bond, Understanding Trends in Jail Populations, 2014-2019: A
Multi-Site Analysis, (Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, December 2021).
15
In this analysis, charges are categorized as “violent” when they involve force or threat of force resulting
in bodily injury or death, a definition that is based on the FBI’s definition of violent crime under the
Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. This includes charges such as murder and non-negligient
manslaughter, rape, robbery, assault, battery, and kidnapping. Involuntary manslaughter and vehicular
homicide are categorized separately under “other person offenses.”
12
Figure 6
Top charge type #1: Failure to appear
Almost a quarter of pretrial jail admissions were due solely to failure to appear for a court
hearing (FTA). See section 2 of this report for more detailed information about FTA bookings.
Top charge type #2: Violent charges
Violent top charges made up 21 percent of pretrial admissions and 32 percent of pretrial
bed-days. Within the category of pretrial admissions with a violent top charge, 65 percent of
pretrial admissions were for domestic violence charges for which arrest is mandatory in
Kansas.
17
Looking specifically at pretrial admissions, domestic violence charges accounted for 61
percent of the top charges classified as violent on which men are booked into jail and 72 percent
of the top charges classified as violent on which women are booked into jail. Notably, 45 percent
of the total number of people booked into jail and 46 percent of the people booked pretrial with
a domestic violence top charge were ultimately released due to the charge(s) being dismissed.
18
Research suggests that while mandatory arrest policies are meant to protect survivors of
domestic violence, they can have unintended negative consequences, including higher arrest
18
For men, 38 percent of domestic battery admissions were dismissed, and for women, 59 percent of
domestic battery admissions were dismissed.
17
This may be an undercount of overall domestic violence-related charges, since the data may not always
note whether or not a violent charge was domestic in nature. See KS Stat § 22-2307 (2021).
13
rates for survivors of domestic violence, unwanted involvement of child protective services, and
increased risk of retaliation.
19
After domestic violence charges, the next six most common types of charges classified as violent
were misdemeanor battery (7 percent of violent pretrial admissions), felony aggravated battery
(7 percent), felony aggravated assault (7 percent), misdemeanor battery on a law enforcement
officer (3 percent), misdemeanor assault (2 percent), and felony aggravated robbery (1 percent).
As shown in figure 7, people charged with misdemeanor battery or misdemeanor assault charges
were released on their own recognizance more than half of the time. Misdemeanor assault and
felony aggravated assault charges were the most likely to be dismissed or not filed–33 and 20
percent of the time, respectively.
Figure 7
Top charge type #3: DUI charges
Driving under the influence (DUI) as a top charge made up 19 percent of pretrial admissions but
less than 2 percent of pretrial bed-days. DUI charges–91 percent of which were
misdemeanors–also require arrest in Kansas.
20
However, the median length of stay for people
admitted pretrial on DUI charges was less than one day. People with multiple DUI convictions
and/or a habitual violator charge may be an exception; these “enhanced DUI” cases make up
only 17 percent of DUI-related pretrial bookings but account for 69 percent of DUI-related
pretrial bed-days. DUI convictions also have mandatory jail stays, with penalties ranging from
48 hours to 6 months upon a first conviction up to 90 days to a year for a fourth or subsequent
conviction.
21
Habitual violator convictions, which occur when people have been convicted of a
21
KS Stat § 8-1567 (2021).
20
KS Stat § 8-2104 (2021).
19
Victoria Frye, Mary Haviland, and Valli Rajah, “Dual Arrest and Other Unintended Consequences of
Mandatory Arrest in New York City: A Brief Report,” Journal of Family Violence 22, no. 6 (2007),
397-405; and Mimi E. Kim, “From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice: Women of-Color
Feminism and Alternatives to Incarceration,” Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work 27,
no. 3 (2018), 1-15.
14
number of motor vehicle-related charges three or more times in the last five years, also come
with a 90-day minimum mandatory jail penalty.
22
While DUI charges may not be a significant
driver of pretrial bed-days, the high number of DUI admissions likely account for a substantial
amount of law enforcement time processing arrests, bookings, and releases. In addition, people
between the ages of 18 and 25 accounted for a disproportionate 37 percent of admissions with a
DUI top charge, compared to 28 percent of admissions due to all other charges.
Top charge type #4: Public administration charges
Public administration charges are a group of charges related to tampering or interfering with the
work of government officers, including law enforcement and corrections staff. The most
common top charge within this group was misdemeanor “interference with law enforcement
officer” (40 percent of pretrial public administration charges), a charge that most commonly
refers to obstructing or resisting arrest in the data, but can also be more serious allegations such
as tampering with evidence or making a false report. Misdemeanor violation of a protective
order made up 29 percent of pretrial admissions where a public administration charge was the
top charge. Other types of charges in this category include (but are not limited to) unlawful
tampering with electronic monitoring equipment, intimidation of a witness/victim, and
violating the offender registration act.
Top charge type #5: Drug possession charges
This category refers to simple drug possession charges, excluding any drug possession charges
that include an intent to sell or distribute (which are included in the category “drug
manufacture/delivery”). Admissions where a drug possession charge was the top charge made
up 5 percent of pretrial admissions and 7 percent of pretrial bed-days. More than half of pretrial
drug possession admissions (53 percent) were for possession of an opiate, opium, narcotic or
stimulant, which is a felony charge in Kansas.
23
Of the pretrial admissions where drug
possession was the top charge, 40 percent were for misdemeanors—primarily possession of a
hallucinogenic drug, followed by drug paraphernalia charges.
Top charge type #6: Theft
Admissions where a theft-related charge was the top charge accounted for 4 percent of pretrial
admissions and 4 percent of pretrial bed-days. Almost half (43 percent) of pretrial theft
admissions were for misdemeanor charges that are likely to be related to poverty–the majority
for theft of property or services worth less than $1,500, followed by criminal use of a financial
card of less than $1,000 and criminal deprivation of property.
24
Of the pretrial theft admissions
where the top charge was a felony, 10 percent were for identity theft, a level 8 nonperson felony
in Kansas except in cases where the monetary loss is greater than $100,000.
25
Overall, 44
percent of pretrial theft admissions had a level 9 nonperson felony as the top charge–the least
severe type of felony related to theft–but the specific details of these charges are unclear from
the data. Based on Kansas statute, these charges could be one of three types of theft of property
25
KS Stat § 21-6107 (2021).
24
KS Stat § 21-5801 (2021) for theft of property or services; KS Stat §21-5828 (2021) for criminal use of a
financial card; and KS Stat § 21-5803 (2021) for criminal deprivation of property.
23
KS Stat § 21-5706 (2021).
22
KS Stat § 8-286 (2021); and KS Stat § 8-287 (2021).
15
or services that are classified as level 9 nonperson felonies in Kansas: (1) theft of property or
services between $1,500 and $25,000; (2) theft of property worth less than $1,500 from three
separate establishments within a period of 72 hours; and (3) theft of property worth between
$50 and $1,500 committed by a person with at least two prior theft convictions in the previous
five years.
Top charge type #7: Other property charges
The group “other property offenses” primarily includes criminal property damage charges.
Within people admitted pretrial with criminal property damage as a top charge, 74 percent were
misdemeanors and 24 percent were felonies.
What is driving pretrial bed-days?
In addition to pretrial admissions, we also look at pretrial bed-days–that is, the sum of days
spent in jail across persons admitted pretrial–to understand not just which types of charges are
contributing the greatest number of admissions, but which types of charges are responsible for
both high admissions and long jail stays, and thus impacting the size of the jail.
Figure 7 shows the top 15 most common charges driving pretrial bed-days. Compared to the
types of charges that drive pretrial admissions, violent charges, burglary charges, drug
manufacture and delivery charges, other person offenses, and sex offenses are stronger drivers
of pretrial bed-days. This is expected, as there are fewer people admitted to jail on these more
serious charges, but they spend longer in jail, likely either because they have been remanded
without bail, or are unable to pay the higher monetary bail amount set on more serious felony
cases. While the top or controlling charge is generally thought of as the charge that is keeping
someone in jail, there may also be cases in which someone is pending trial on a charge and
would be released–save for a probation violation related to another charge that is keeping them
in jail pending a hearing. During the time period covered by this analysis, people in this
situation were not eligible to be released, even if their bond was paid; however, according to the
CJCC, people with probation violations were made eligible for pretrial release with pretrial
services in March, 2022. Additional analysis should be undertaken to see whether people
charged with probation violations are being released more quickly and/or at higher rates as a
result of this policy change.
16
Figure 7
FTA as a top charge accounted for almost one in five pretrial bed-days (17 percent). This is due
to the high number of admissions for these charges, rather than longer jail stays. The median
length of stay is 0.8 days for people admitted pretrial with FTA as a top charge. Unfortunately,
the absence of an originating charge in the jail management system does not allow us to identify
the portion of admissions with FTA as a top charge that have a serious or violent felony
originating charge. Nevertheless, the high volume of short jail stays for these types of charges
raises serious questions about the public safety rationale of booking people into jail–especially
given that better alternatives exist to ensure peoples’ appearance at court. It is also impossible to
distinguish between failures to appear that reflect intentional efforts to evade justice as opposed
to missed court dates that stem from conflicts, challenges, forgetting, or a misunderstanding of
the judicial process. As discussed further in Section 3, available evidence suggests that the
majority of FTA charges are in the latter category. If most or all bookings in this category were to
be eliminated, the county would likely realize cost savings, reduce jail staff administrative time
spent processing bookings and releases, and prevent the unnecessary trauma and destabilization
people experience in jails.
Admissions where a public administration charge was a top charge accounted for 8 percent of
pretrial bed-days–again, mainly due to the high number of admissions for these charges, rather
17
than long jail stays. The median length of stay was less than 1 day for people admitted pretrial
with this top charge.
Admissions where a simple drug possession charge was the top charge accounted for 7 percent
of pretrial bed-days, and admissions where a drug manufacture or delivery charge was the top
charge accounted for 4 percent of pretrial bed-days. Similar to FTAs and public administration
charges, these charges factor in the top 10 types of charges driving pretrial bed-days due to the
high number of admissions for these charges, rather than long lengths of stay. The median
length of stay is 0.4 days (almost half a day) for people admitted pretrial on simple drug
possession charges and 0.8 days for those admitted pretrial on drug manufacture or delivery
charges. Again, this raises questions about opportunities to avoid jail bookings altogether,
particularly given the well-documented negative consequences of incarceration for people who
use drugs.
The category “other person offense” includes charges that are classified as person crimes in the
Kansas sentencing guidelines, but are not included in the list of violent charges or other
categories delineated in this report. Person charges generally refer to offenses that inflict, or
could inflict, harm to another person. People charged with other person offenses made up 2
percent of pretrial admissions and 6 percent of pretrial bed-days. The majority (78 percent) of
pretrial admissions for other person offenses were for attempted or actual criminal threat, for
which the median pretrial length of stay was 1.5 days.
Admissions where burglary was the top charge accounted for less than 2 percent of pretrial
admissions and 6 percent of pretrial bed-days. The median pretrial length of stay for people
admitted on burglary charges was 2.5 days, and 3.5 days for aggravated burglary cases.
The category “municipal/county violation” is used as an “other” category when officers don’t
know or didn’t list the charge on a booking. This charge has been less frequently used in more
recent years.
The category “other property offense” includes charges that are classified as property crimes in
the Kansas sentencing guidelines, but that fall outside of the other categories. The majority (88
percent) of pretrial admissions in this category were for criminal damage to property, for which
the median pretrial length of stay was 0.1 days.
Pretrial admissions resulting from arrest warrants (denoted as “Arrest by LEO”) accounted for 2
percent of pretrial bed-days and 1 percent of pretrial admissions.
26
People admitted to jail
pretrial with an arrest warrant as the top charge had a relatively high median length of stay–8.7
days. The lack of originating charge in the data means we do not know what these warrants were
for; however, for the majority of these cases, the warrant is likely an outstanding warrant for a
past action or missed hearing. Out of a total of 478 pretrial admissions in which the person
booked into jail had a warrant listed one or more times on the booking, 30 percent had no other
type of charge listed, and 21 percent were only accompanied by an administrative charge. In 13
26
The relevant statute for this charge states that it can occur when there is a warrant out for a person’s
arrest or when an officer has probable cause to believe that a person is committing or has committed a
crime; however, in all instances where this charge appears in the dataset, the charge is denoted as a
warrant arrest, either local or for another state or jurisdiction. See KS Stat § 22-2401 (2021).
18
percent of pretrial admissions with an arrest warrant, the warrant was only accompanied by a
misdemeanor or unknown charge and no felony–most commonly domestic battery, driving
while suspended, DUI and interference with a law enforcement officer (which includes resisting
or obstructing arrest). In 36 percent of pretrial admissions with an arrest warrant, the warrant
was accompanied by one or more felony charges–most commonly interference with a law
enforcement officer, followed by possession of stolen property and drug paraphernalia charges.
Whether or not an arrest was made pursuant to a warrant may not be uniformly or reliably
recorded in the jail management system, given the relatively small number of admissions and
lack of overlap with, for example, FTA bookings. Instead, it is likely that this is only recorded in
a subset of situations.
How long did people being held pretrial stay in jail?
The majority of people admitted pretrial (64 percent) were booked and released within 24
hours, and the median length of stay overall for people held pretrial was half a day. However,
Black and Native American people were less likely than white people, Latino people, or people of
Asian descent to be released the same day, and more likely to have longer pretrial lengths of
stay. Figure 8 shows pretrial lengths of stay by race/ethnic group. Fifty-seven percent of Black
people and 60 percent of Native American people were released the same day they were booked,
compared to 65 percent of white people, 71 percent of Latino people, and 73 percent of Asian
people. Black people were more likely to be held pretrial for at least one week than people of any
other race or ethnicity.
27
Figure 8
27
This does not control for the severity of the charges, though it is well-documented that Black people are
treated more harshly at every stage of the criminal legal system.
19
What is driving pretrial releases?
Given the well-documented harms of pretrial detention for individuals and their families, we
look at the release reasons for people who were held pretrial in order to better understand how
frequently people are able to avoid lengthy pretrial detention by paying cash or surety bonds
versus by being released without any financial conditions, and how this differs based on peoples’
most serious charge. Looking at release reasons also gives us insight into how frequently people
are released because the charge or charges against them are dismissed by a judge or not filed by
a prosecutor.
Figure 9 shows release reasons and median length of stay for people who were admitted pretrial.
Of the total number of people admitted pretrial, 38 percent were released on their own
recognizance (OR) and 30 percent were released after they or someone else paid a cash or surety
bond.
28
In 13 percent of pretrial admissions, people were released because the charge or charges
against them were dismissed or not filed. Notably, 36 percent of pretrial admissions with a
violent top charge–primarily misdemeanor domestic battery charges–were dismissed by a judge
or not filed by the prosecutor. Violent charges were the most likely category of charges to be
dismissed or not filed in the dataset. Other types of charges that are commonly dismissed or not
filed in pretrial cases include child endangerment, burglary, arson, theft or possession of stolen
property, and criminal threat.
Figure 9
28
Release on one’s own recognizance, or OR, is a court decision to allow a person charged with a crime to
remain out of custody while they await their trial. In Kansas, OR release is sometimes given without
conditions or collateral, and sometimes involves a cash deposit of 10 percent of the bond amount.
Cash bonds require an individual to pay the court the full amount of a person’s bail in cash to secure
pretrial release, while surety bonds involve paying 10 percent or more of the bond amount plus fees to a
bail bond company.
20
A small number of people (260 pretrial bookings or about 2 percent of pretrial admissions) were
admitted to jail pretrial and then released for “time served.” This category is likely made up of
people who were held on unaffordable bond and pleaded to time served. More than half of
admissions in this category were people held pretrial on an FTA top charge with a median length
of stay of 10 days.
Figure 10 shows the percentage of pretrial bookings by release reason for charges grouped by
severity. People who were booked pretrial on an FTA top charge were the most likely to be
released with cash, surety, or credit card bond, followed by those with nonperson, nonviolent
felonies.
29
This may reflect a belief that posting monetary bond compels future court appearance
or reflect the assignment of a risk level based on previous non-appearance. All available
evidence shows, however, that non-monetary conditions of release are just as effective in
ensuring court appearance, and that pretrial detention prior to posting a bond can actually
reduce appearance rates.
30
People booked pretrial on an FTA top charge were also the most
likely to be released on “judge’s authority”–likely because such a large share of people booked on
FTAs have municipal court FTAs. A person can be released at a judge’s discretion in a range of
situations, such as if the judge eliminates a person’s bond. This might be analogous to being
released on one’s recognizance, but is recorded differently.
Overall, violent charges were the most frequent to be dismissed or not filed. Almost 70 percent
of admissions for nonperson, nonviolent misdemeanors were released on their own
recognizance.
30
Michael R. Jones, Unsecured Bonds: The As Effective and Most Efficient Pretrial Release Option
(Washington, DC: Pretrial Justice Institute, 2013); and Christopher Lowenkamp, Marie VanNostrand,
and Alexander Holsinger, The Hidden Costs of Pretrial Detention (Houston, TX: Laura and John Arnold
Foundation, 2013).
29
Kansas is a “right to bail” state, meaning that anyone arrested on a non-capital offense is entitled to the
right to freedom pending trial, and that any bond amount that is higher than necessary to ensure that the
individual does not evade justice nor pose a threat to public safety is considered excessive.
21
Figure 10
Taking a closer look at people who were released with cash, surety or credit card bonds, figure 11
groups these admissions by severity and type of charge. Approximately three quarters of those
released with cash or surety bond had a misdemeanor or FTA as their most severe charge. Over
a quarter of these individuals were admitted for nonperson, nonviolent misdemeanor charges.
The most common of these charges was DUI (16 percent). Other types of nonviolent
misdemeanor charges frequently released with financial bond include criminal damage to
property, driving on a suspended license, violating a protection order, interference with a law
enforcement officer, and drug possession charges.
22
Figure 11
23
3. Jail admissions for court system failures and municipal charges
Failures to appear, probation violations, remands and municipal charges are
significant drivers of the Douglas County jail population, together accounting for
just over half of all jail admissions and bed-days from 2017 to 2021.
31
Figure 12 shows
the portion of total admissions for failures to appear, probation violations, and remands
compared to admissions for all other charges from 2017 to 2021. More details about how failures
to appear, probation violations, and remands figure in municipal court charges is provided in
the later section “Admissions where a municipal charge is the sole or top charge.”
Figure 12
In recent years, efforts to reduce the Douglas County jail population have had some impact on
reducing admissions for FTA, probation violations and municipal charges, indicating
momentum toward continued reforms. Annual jail admissions declined by almost half from
2017 to 2020, from 5,297 to 2,838, before increasing again to 3,230 in 2021. Almost 20 percent
of that drop occurred from 2017 to 2019, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, during
which time the court system, district attorney’s office and sheriff’s office adopted protocols to
31
Municipal charges are defined as those originating from Douglas County’s three municipal courts - one
each for Baldwin City, Eudora, and Lawrence, including failures to appear, probation violations, and
remands originating from municipal court.
24
reduce the jail population.
32
From 2017 to 2021, FTAs as a portion of total admissions declined
from 23 to 17 percent, probation violations declined from 7 to 6 percent of total admissions, and
municipal charges declined from 35 to 28 percent of admissions. Remands increased from 2 to 8
percent of admissions.
Failures to appear
FTAs were the most common top charge for overall admissions: they made up 21
percent of total admissions and accounted for 12 percent of bed-days. They were also
the most common top charge for pretrial admissions, and for admissions from municipal court.
Although FTA top charges as a portion of overall admissions declined slightly from 2017 to 2021,
the median length of stay for FTA admissions doubled from less than 1 day to almost 2 days.
Of the admissions with FTA as top charge, 45 percent were released on cash or surety bond; only
17 percent were released on their own recognizance, and another 14 percent were released on
“judge’s authority.”
33
About half were released the same day, and half were released after having
been in jail for 24 hours or more–staying in jail a median of 5 days. It is notable that a large
portion of people are facing jail stays and posting money bail to secure their release for a missed
court appearance–a charge with a number of effective alternative responses.
34
Even people
booked into jail and released on the same day generate costs associated with the intake and
release process, can strain limited jail resources and contribute to capacity challenges.
Overall, 31 percent of all admissions from 2017 to 2021 had one or more FTAs among the
charges listed on the booking. Figure 13 shows the most common types of accompanying charges
for admissions where one or more FTAs were present on booking. Among these admissions,
FTAs were the only type of charge on the booking 65 percent of the time. In 15 percent of cases,
FTAs were accompanied by at least one felony-level charge. In 10 percent of cases, FTAs were
accompanied only by misdemeanor-level or unknown charges and no felony charge, and in 9
percent of cases, FTAs were accompanied only by a probation violation, remand or arrest
warrant and no other charges. Issuing and strictly enforcing warrants for people who miss court
appearances is often justified as the only way to manage court dockets. Evidence shows,
however, that most people do not fail to appear in court because they are willfully evading
prosecution, but because they are facing barriers such as a lack of transportation, childcare or an
inability to take time off of work. Others forget their court dates or don’t understand the
consequences of not appearing, particularly when longer periods of time elapse between charges
and hearings.
35
35
B.H. Bornstein et al., “Reducing Courts’ Failure-to-Appear Rate by Written Reminders,” Psychology,
Public Policy, and Law 19, no. 1 (2013): 70-80; and Brice Cooke, Binta Zahra Diop, Alissa Fishbane,
34
Evelyn F. McCoy, Azhar Gulaid, Nkechi Arondu, and Janeen Buck Wilson, Removing Barriers to
Pretrial Appearance, (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2021).
33
A person can be released based on a judge’s discretion in a range of situations, such as if the judge
eliminates a person’s bond. Ninety percent of these “judge’s authority” releases for FTA admissions were
out of Lawrence Municipal Court.
32
“Covid-19 Impact on Jail Population and Criminal Justice Processing,” Presentation to Criminal Justice
Coordinating Council, (Douglas County, KS: June 9, 2020)
https://www.douglascountyks.org/sites/default/files/docs/county-news/pdf/june92020covidandcrimina
ljustice-jailpresentedtocriminaljusticecoordinatingcouncil.pdf.
25
Figure 13
Overall, 40 percent of admissions in which FTA was the top charge were classified
as traffic cases from either municipal or district court–and in over a third of those
cases, the people jailed lived in another county. Of the traffic-related FTA cases, 58
percent were from municipal court (all but 1 case were from Lawrence), and 42 percent were
from district court–primarily from the pro tem division, which handles criminal first
appearances, small claims, and traffic offenses. Thirty-five percent of traffic-related admissions
with an FTA top charge were for people with an address outside of Douglas County
(non-residents), mainly district court cases. The data suggests that a large number of failure to
appear warrants are being issued when people fail to appear in court following a traffic or
parking-related offense, and that this situation frequently leads to a subsequent arrest. This
raises questions about underlying misaligned incentives that may be fueling this practice. The
practice of using traffic enforcement and resulting warrants to collect court costs and “pay to
stay” jail fees is well-documented. Also called a “backdoor tax,” this is a mechanism increasingly
used by municipal governments to fund their operations without raising taxes.
36
For example,
the high-profile investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the Ferguson, MO Police
Department found that law enforcement practices were “shaped by the City’s focus on revenue
rather than by public safety needs,” raising constitutional concerns and compromising the role
of the municipal court.
37
Scrutiny practice of jailing poor people in connection with generating
revenue has not been confined to Ferguson, however and has resulted in lawsuits in multiple
states on grounds that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
38
38
“See for example, “Litigation: Cain v. New Orleans,” Fines and Fees Justice Center, August 23, 2019,
https://finesandfeesjusticecenter.org/articles/cain-v-new-orleans/; and “Wilkins v. Aberdeen
Enterprises,” Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, November 2, 2017,
https://clearinghouse.net/case/17700/.
37
United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Investigation of the Ferguson Police
Department, (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Justice, 2015)
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_polic
e_department_report.pdf.
36
Tony Messenger, Profit and Punishment: How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice
(New York, NY, St. Martin's Press, 2021).
Jonathan Hayes, Aurelie Ouss, Anuj Shah, Using Behavioral Science to Improve Criminal Justice
Outcomes (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Crime Lab, 2018).
26
Economic research has also suggested a revenue-generating incentive for traffic enforcement,
showing a significant increase in tickets after revenue declines.
39
Probation violations
Probation violations were the fifth most common top charge for overall admissions and the
second-highest contributor to jail bed-days–accounting for over 49,000 bed-days from 2017 to
2021.
40
Probation violations were also the fourth most common top charge for admissions from
district court and the second most common top charge for out-of-county admissions. Probation
violations were also prevalent in municipal court, which only handles misdemeanors and
infractions, but they were less frequently the top charge. The portion of overall admissions with
a probation violation as the top charge declined slightly from 2017 to 2021, but the median
length of stay for probation violation admissions increased from 8 to 12 days.
Of the bookings with a probation violation as a top charge, 28 percent were released on cash or
surety bond. Only 13 percent were released on their own recognizance. An additional 21 percent
of people were released to a probation/parole agency, to house arrest, or to some other agency;
19 percent were released for time served; 7 percent were released under “judge’s authority”; and
5 percent were released to the DOC. More than 78 percent of bookings with a probation
violation as the top charge were released after 24 hours or more–staying in jail a median of 18.5
days.
41
According to discussions with the Lawrence Prosecuting Attorney in April 2022, the
Lawrence Municipal Court commonly jails people who have not been able to complete probation
requirements–such as the payment of court fines and fees or attendance at a court-mandated
program–and sets the bond at the same amount the person already owes the court. The
municipal court rationale is that, upon payment, a person’s outstanding court debt will be
settled. However, a person who could not pay a financial sanction prior to detention is unlikely
to be able to pay that same amount while detained, which could contribute to longer lengths of
stay. If a person is ultimately forced to pay the private bail industry a non-refundable percentage
of the bond to secure their release, it only deepens financial precarity and makes them more
vulnerable to future incarceration for nonpayment of costs, fees and fines. This practice opens
the county up to potential legal liabilities. Rutherford County, Tennessee was the subject of a
2015 class action lawsuit for its practice of jailing people for failing to pay probation fees, which
resulted in a monetary settlement and permanent injunction prohibiting an individual from
being "held in jail for nonpayment of fines, fees, costs or a pre-probation revocation money bond
imposed by a court without a determination, following a meaningful inquiry into the individual's
ability to pay, that the the individual has the ability to pay such that any nonpayment is
41
For this analysis, probation violations were separated out from pretrial admissions and sentenced
admissions. See figure 4 for details.
40
Unfortunately the data do not allow us to identify the nature of the probation violation, nor the original
charge for which the person was put on probation. However, we are able to differentiate technical
violations from more serious ones, because the more serious ones show up as other charges listed on a
booking–and these would outrank the probation violation as the “top charge” on a booking.
39
Thomas A. Garrett, Thomas A., and Gary A. Wagner. “Red ink in the rearview mirror: Local fiscal
conditions and the issuance of traffic tickets.” The Journal of Law and Economics 52, no. 1 (2009): 71-90;
Min Su. “Taxation by citation? Exploring local governments’ revenue motive for traffic fines.” Public
Administration Review 80, no. 1 (2020): 36-45.
27
willful.”
42
This practice has also been challenged in other jurisdictions. It also raises good
governance questions from a fiscal perspective, given that the county is paying to incarcerate
someone who is further impoverished by their jail stay. Previous Vera research has shown that
counties pay more to incarcerate people for nonpayment than they are able to generate in fines,
fees and costs.
43
Overall, 10 percent of all admissions from 2017 to 2021 had one or more probation violations
among the charges listed on the booking (even if a probation violation was not the top charge).
Figure 14 shows the most common types of accompanying charges for these bookings. Among
these admissions, probation violations were the only type of charge on the booking 45 percent of
the time. In 35 percent of cases, probation violations were accompanied only by
misdemeanor-level or unknown charges, failures to appear, supervision violations, remands, or
warrants but no new charges. In 20 percent of cases, probation violations were accompanied by
at least 1 felony charge.
Figure 14
Remands
Remands were the eighth most common top charge for overall admissions: they made up 3
percent of total admissions and accounted for 4 percent of bed-days. Remand refers to
court-ordered detention without bail, and was historically reserved for people charged with
capital offenses. However, in the data, remands are often listed without an accompanying charge
and with no indication of the originating charge, so it is somewhat difficult to assess how
remand is currently being used in Douglas County. We know that the use of remand has
increased in recent years, and the data suggests it is frequently used for less serious offenses.
From 2017 to 2021, the total number of admissions with remand as the top or sole charge
increased from 130 to 269 (+107 percent). The portion of admissions with remand top charges
43
Mathilde Laisne, Jon Wool, Christian Henrichson, Past Due: Examining the Costs and Consequences of
Charging for Justice in New Orleans (New Orleans: Vera Institute of Justice, 2017).
42
Rodriguez v. Providence Community Corrections, Inc., No. 3:15-cv-01048 (U.S. District Court for the
Middle District of Tennessee, 2018); Case Summary, Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, accessed
October 5, 2022, https://clearinghouse.net/case/15160/.
28
increased from 3 percent to 8 percent, and the median length of stay for people with a remand
top charge was cut in half–from 5 days to 2. Of admissions with remand as top charge, the
majority came from district court (65 percent), and most had “sentenced county time” listed as
the judicial status. Further investigation is needed to understand how and why people are being
remanded in Douglas County, and the degree to which it reflects detention after the violation of
some of the conditions of release or supervision.
Overall, 51 percent of remand top charge admissions were classified as traffic
cases from either municipal or district court. Fifty-one percent of traffic-related remand
cases were from Lawrence municipal court, and 49 percent were from district court. Although
the data do not allow us to identify the exact originating charge leading to remand, this seems to
indicate that remand is being frequently used in practice to jail people for less serious
traffic-related charges, most of which are presumably low-level–particularly those originating
from municipal court.
44
Overall, 5 percent of all admissions from 2017 to 2021 had one or more remands among the
charges listed on the booking (even if remand was not the top charge). Among these admissions,
remands were the only type of charge on the booking 64 percent of the time. In 18 percent of
cases, remands were accompanied only by misdemeanor-level or less severe charges, failures to
appear, supervision violations, or warrants, and no other charges. In another 18 percent of
cases, remands were accompanied by one or more felony-level charges.
Admissions where a municipal charge is the only type of charge
Bookings where a municipal court charge was the only type of charge someone was facing
accounted for 30 percent of overall admissions and 8 percent of bed-days from 2017 to 2021.
45
This is an under-representation of bookings resulting from municipal court charges as it does
not include bookings with a mix of charges from district and municipal court, or those where a
municipal court charge is accompanied by an out-of-county charge. Figure 15 shows the
proportion of admissions by court type over the previous five years. The fact that a quarter to a
third of admissions to the jail over the past five years were due solely to municipal court
charges–which are generally low-level charges–signifies there is significant opportunity to
reduce the use of the jail for people charged with municipal offenses. This would also have a
positive impact on the City of Lawrences finances: according to data provided to Vera by local
government officials, Douglas County charges the City of Lawrence a daily fee to hold people
exclusively facing Lawrence Municipal Court cases. In 2023, the daily rate will be $226.
45
Municipal charges are those originating from Douglas County’s three municipal courts - one each for
Baldwin City, Eudora, and Lawrence - which primarily handle violations of city ordinances including
traffic and parking violations. This includes failures to appear, probation violations, and remands
originating from municipal court.
44
It is also important to note that almost all DUI charges from municipal court are categorized as “other”
cases and not “traffic” cases, and thus are not included in the traffic-related cases driving remands.
29
Overall, roughly 70 percent of people admitted only on one or more municipal charges were held
pretrial.
46
The majority were quickly released from jail; 60 percent of people admitted for
municipal charges were released the same day; those that stayed for 24 hours or more spent a
median of 3 days in jail.
Almost a third of admissions with only municipal charges were classified as traffic
cases. Of these admissions for traffic-related municipal charges, about 45 percent had an FTA
top charge, 41 percent had a “municipal/county violation” top charge (indicating the charge was
not listed or not known), 9 percent had a remand top charge, and 5 percent had a probation
violation top charge. People admitted on municipal traffic related charges spent a median of 2
days in jail; 33 percent were released for time served, 26 percent were released after posting
cash, surety or credit card bond, 14 percent were released to house arrest, 12 percent were
released per a judge’s authority, 9 percent had an unknown release reason, and only 3 percent
were released on their own recognizance.
Figure 15
As noted above, bookings on municipal charges alone declined from 2018 to 2020, but then
increased from 2020 to 2021. Despite this slight downward trajectory, more is left to be done.
Figure 16 shows the change in the number of admissions for the top 10 most common top
46
The “pretrial” label may be inaccurate in a small number of municipal court cases. Some people’s
judicial status may be labeled as “pretrial” even though they are technically serving a sentence. Although it
is impossible to identify in the data how many people may have an inaccurate pretrial label, jail staff
indicate that this is likely a small number of people and that data practices have reduced this problem in
recent years.
30
municipal charges from 2017 and 2021, in order from most to least common type of charge in
2017.
Figure 16
Municipal-only admissions with a top charge of failure to appear or DUI declined during this
time. Municipal-only admissions with a top charge of probation violation, driving while
suspended, interference with a law enforcement officer, drug possession, and trespass also
declined moderately. These reductions likely reflect specific practice changes made by the
municipal court judges, such as creating warrant clinics. However, the number of
municipal-only admissions with remand as the top charge increased from 15 to 131 (+773
percent). As noted previously in this report, it is difficult to assess how remands are being used
in Douglas County due to data limitations. However, 98 percent of municipal-only admissions
31
with a top charge of remand originated in Lawrence municipal court, and about three-quarters
were classified as traffic-related cases. As noted above, this suggests that remand is being used
by the municipal court primarily to jail people in connection with low-level traffic-related
charges. Municipal-only admissions with criminal damage to property as a top charge also
increased from 34 to 57 (+68 percent).
To hone in on the most pressing issues to address in municipal court, figure 17 shows the
percentage of municipal-only admissions and bed-days for the top 10 most frequent types of
municipal charges in 2021–the most recent year of data included in this analysis. Failures to
appear and remands accounted for significant portions of municipal-only admissions and
bed-days, while driving under the influence charges made up a quarter of municipal-only
admissions and only 1 percent of bed-days. Nonviolent, nonperson charges including criminal
property damage, criminal trespass, interference with a law enforcement officer, theft, driving
while suspended, and disorderly conduct, combined, accounted for a quarter of municipal-only
admissions and 15 percent of municipal-only bed-days.
Figure 17
32
4. Systemic issues driving multiple bookings into the jail
As shown in figure 18, the majority of people (61 percent) were admitted to the jail once from
2017 to 2021. However, people with one jail stay only made up about a third of admissions and
22 percent of bed-days. About 40 percent of people were admitted two or more times;
these individuals made up 70 percent of admissions and 78 percent of bed-days.
Figure 18
People with multiple bookings were more likely to be admitted and to spend longer in jail for
administrative charges than people who were admitted only once. Figure 19 shows admissions
and bed-days by top charge type for people with one booking versus people with multiple
bookings from 2017 to 2021. People with multiple bookings were more likely to be admitted for
a failure to appear, probation violation, remand, or parole violation than people with one
booking. This indicates that violations of probation and/or other forms of supervision are a
significant driver of recurring jail admissions: once people have more than one jail booking, they
likely become more entangled in the various system and supervision requirements and assorted
penalties for non-compliance. Evidence also suggests that people on probation have markedly
higher rates of behavioral health challenges than the general population, making compliance
with complicated and/or strict conditions of release even more challenging to navigate.
47
47
Alex Roth, Sandhya Kajeepeta, Alex Boldin, The Perils of Probation: How Supervision Contributes to
Jail Populations. (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2021), 9.
33
Figure 19
A subset of people–581 individuals–were admitted to the jail six or more times from 2017 to
2021. This group of people accounted for almost a quarter of all admissions and 35 percent of
bed-days. About 43 percent of admissions for this group of people were due to administrative
charges such as failures to appear, probation violations, remands, parole violations, and arrest
warrants. Another 31 percent of these admissions were due to nonperson, nonviolent charges,
and 16 percent were due to violent, person, or weapons-related charges–most commonly for
charges related to domestic violence, although these were slightly less prevalent than for overall
admissions. Of the admissions for nonperson, nonviolent charges, the most common top
charges were misdemeanor criminal trespass, misdemeanor DUI, felony possession of an
opiate, opium, narcotic or stimulant, and misdemeanor interference with a law enforcement
officer.
The prevalence of these types of charges among people with multiple bookings suggests that
many people are cycling in and out of jail for issues related to mental illness, drug and alcohol
use, and poverty rather than more serious alleged crimes involving violence against another
person or persons. In 2021, 28 percent of the Douglas County jail population was assessed as
having serious mental illness, although the true percentage may be higher due to
underreporting.
48
This subset of people likely have unmet needs related to behavioral health and
substance abuse that would be better addressed outside of the jail via community-based
resources.
48
Data on Douglas County Correctional Facility bookings and population from Spillman Jail Management
System, reported in the Stepping Up Initiative Dashboard,
https://gis.douglascountyks.org/portal/apps/dashboards/f4a65d6ba1a3422caf3cfe1501c74284.
34
5. Admissions for people serving county and state sentences
People who were serving county and state sentences made up 14 percent of overall admissions
and 33 percent of bed-days from 2017 to 2021. The terms “sentenced county time” and
“sentenced state time” refer to whether people have been ordered to serve their sentence in a
county jail or a state prison.
49
People whose judicial status is listed as “sentenced state time” in
the jail are likely awaiting transfer to the Kansas Department of Corrections, although there may
be other reasons that state-sentenced people are being held in the jail. Figure 20 shows the
breakdown of admissions and bed days by type of sentence. Most people who were sentenced
were serving county sentences; however, state-sentenced people accounted for a greater share of
bed-days. People serving county sentences stayed in jail a median of 2 days, compared to 118
days for people serving state sentences.
Figure 20
County sentences
From 2017 to 2021, the share of total admissions represented by people serving county
sentences declined from 12 percent to 9 percent. It is somewhat unclear what drove the decline
in county-sentenced admissions, since it was mainly driven by a large reduction in the number
of admissions where the top charge was listed as “municipal/county violation”--a category that
is used when officers don’t know or didn’t list the actual charge, and which officers used less
frequently in recent years. The number of county-sentenced admissions for this category
declined from 509 (78 percent of county-sentenced admissions) in 2017 to 15 (5 percent of
county-sentenced admissions) in 2021. Over the same time period, the number of
county-sentenced admissions due to remands more than doubled, from 99 to
234–and 71 percent of remand cases in 2021 were traffic-related.
In 2021, there were 277 county-sentenced admissions to the jail–and only 21 of these
admissions were for non-administrative charges, meaning that those serving county sentences
in the jail are almost always serving time for administrative charges. Of those serving county
sentences in 2021, remand as a top charge accounted for 84 percent of admissions and 33
percent of bed-days, and people serving a county sentence with a remand top charge spent a
median of 2 days in jail. Failure to appear as a top charge accounted for 8 percent of
49
For this analysis, people serving time for probation or parole violations are not included in the
“sentenced county time” and “sentenced state time” populations.
35
county-sentenced admissions and 24 percent of bed-days, and people spent a median of 30 days
in jail for this charge. More than half of county-sentenced remand admissions and 74 percent of
county-sentenced FTA admissions in 2021 came from Lawrence municipal court.
State sentences
From 2017 to 2021, there were a relatively small number of state-sentenced admissions–373 in
total, and the share of admissions for people serving state sentences stayed about the
same–increasing from around 1 percent of total admissions in 2017 to almost 3 percent in 2019,
before declining back to 1 percent of total admissions in 2021. Most people categorized as
“serving state time” in the dataset were ultimately transferred to the Kansas Department of
Corrections (KDOC). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the KDOC was not accepting new
transfers from jails due to space considerations. Perhaps as a result, the median length of stay
for state-sentenced admissions increased from 132 days in 2019 to 158 days in 2021, before
declining to 101 days in 2021. Overall, people serving state sentences spent longer in jail than
any other group.
Overall, 26 percent of state-sentenced admissions had an administrative top charge (mainly
remands and FTAs), and spent a median of 27 days in jail. Another 29 percent of
state-sentenced admissions had a nonviolent, nonperson top charge, most commonly burglary,
drug manufacture/delivery, and drug possession charges. A minority of state-sentenced
admissions, 30 percent, were due to violent, person, or weapons-related charges–most
frequently felony aggravated assault/battery and felony aggravated robbery. Fifteen percent of
state-sentenced admissions were due to other unknown charges.
36
Key Takeaways and Recommendations
The findings included in this memo are meant to provide stakeholders with a detailed analysis of
the factors, practices and policy decisions that determined how the Douglas County Jail was
used over the last five years. Below are key takeaways and policy recommendations to safely
reduce the use of jail in Douglas County.
I. The majority of pretrial admissions are for nonviolent charges, and nearly
half are for misdemeanor charges
◆ In most of these cases, there is little or no public safety rationale for arrest and
pretrial detention. While this analysis cannot reflect the individual circumstances
of each case, the high number of cases in which a person was booked into jail and
released the same day suggests that many people moving through the system
could avoid pretrial booking altogether.
◆ In Kansas, state statute affords law enforcement officers the power to issue
notices to appear or citations for misdemeanors and many traffic infractions
(with the exception of impaired driving or fleeing, and felonies).
50
The volume of
bookings where an eligible misdemeanor or traffic infraction is the top charge
suggests that law enforcement agencies throughout Douglas County do not use
their discretion to issue notices and citations expansively.
◆ A small subset of people (581) are cycling in and out of the jail repeatedly (six or
more times), which contributes significantly to admissions and bed-days. These
individuals are booked primarily on administrative charges related to civil issues
and/or alleged nonperson, nonviolent offenses, and their frequent interaction
with the criminal legal system indicates there are likely underlying needs that
continue to go unaddressed.
◆ The total number of bookings with municipal-only charges has declined during
the five-year period, but municipal court bookings still account for over a quarter
of jail admissions. The practices that helped lead to this reduction should be
celebrated and expanded, but there are additional opportunities to reduce
detention for municipal charges. Many municipal court bookings stem from
underlying traffic charges that could be dealt with outside the criminal legal
system.
◆ Continued street-level enforcement of minor ordinance violations continues to
have a significant impact on jail admissions, and likely results in the disruption of
daily life. Even after a person’s release from jail on municipal charges, this
enforcement carries the potential of days, weeks, or months of detention, should
that person forget a court date or fail to pay probation fees or other outstanding
criminal legal debt.
Recommendations:
1. The Lawrence City Police Department’s current cite and release policy
encourages officers to issue citations in lieu of arrests for eligible misdemeanor
and traffic violations using officer discretion. However, to date, there has not
50
KS Stat § 22-2408 (2021); and KS Stat § 8-2106 (2021).
37
been analysis of when, how, and for whom this policy has been used for, and
whether officer discretion leads to racially inequitable application.
1.1. The Sheriff and Chiefs should develop written department policies
requiring their officers to issue notices to appear and/or citations in all
eligible cases where there is no identifiable imminent threat to another
person or people, and make the policy uniform across departments.
Implementation should be monitored and examined for any unintended
disparities that may persist.
1.2. The Courts should redesign their summons forms to ensure they are clear
and user-friendly. Jurisdictions that have redesigned court summons
paperwork to be more accessible and implemented text message
reminders for court dates decreased their FTA rate by 36 percent.
51
2. Law Enforcement Agencies in Douglas County should expand the use of non-law
enforcement and/or co-responder teams that are equipped to handle issues
relating to mental or behavioral health and domestic violence.
2.1. Ideally, teams should be operational at all hours (not just during the
traditional work-day) and should be integrated into 911 and 988 dispatch.
2.2. Civilian response programs should be constructed with the engagement of
justice system stakeholders and directly impacted community members.
Response teams should not be restricted to licensed clinicians in order to
ensure that requirements do not unduly limit the workforce to people who
don’t reflect the communities they serve.
3. The Douglas County District Attorney’s Office should establish or expand a
district-wide declination policy that directs prosecutors to decline lower-level
misdemeanors, as well as referred cases stemming from unmet needs related to
poverty, addiction, homelessness, or mental health, except in extraordinary
circumstances.
52
3.1. The declination policy should not include narrow eligibility requirements
based on a person’s previous contact with the criminal legal system. This
is likely to inadvertently exclude Black people who are disproportionately
52
See, for example, the Suffolk County (Boston) District Attorney’s Office’s policy to decline 15 charges,
including drug possession, intent to distribute, trespass, and breaking and entering into a vacant property,
Rachael Rollins, The Rachael Rollins Policy Memo (Boston, MA: Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office,
2019); A study of Suffolk County data found that following implementation of DA Rollins’ declination
policy, future system-involvement for individuals affected by the policy decreased by 58 percent, Amanda
Y. Agan, Jennifer L. Doleac, and Anna Harvey, Misdemeanor Prosecution, (Cambridge, MA: National
Bureau of Economic Research, 2021); and Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby also announced in
early 2020 that she would stop prosecuting low-level drug and drug paraphernalia possession and
prostitution. Initially a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the policy was later announced as
permanent. An analysis of its impact found that the policy had a pronounced effect on reducing criminal
justice system contact for Black people in Baltimore and that fewer than 1 percent of the people whose
charges were dropped were re-arrested for serious crimes during the study period. See Saba Rouhani,
Catherine Tomko, Noelle Weicker, and Susan Sherman, Evaluation of Prosecutorial Policy Reforms
Eliminating Criminal Penalties for Drug Possession and Sex Work in Baltimore, Maryland (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2021).
51
Jason Tashea, “Text-message reminders are a cheap and effective way to reduce pretrial detention,”
American Bar Association Journal (July 17, 2018),
https://www.abajournal.com/lawscribbler/article/text_messages_can_keep_people_out_of_jail#.
38
likely to have had previous contact, due in part to disproportionate
policing, which can make criminal history a racially inequitable
criterion.
53
4. The Lawrence City Commissioners, alongside directly impacted community
members and other community leaders, should review the municipal code and
convert charges that are currently being dealt with by the criminal legal system
into non-criminal violations and/or eliminate penalties altogether.
4.1. A work group of the CJCC could identify charges that would be good
candidates for decriminalization and/or alternative approaches.
54
5. Consider diverting traffic control and road safety to a civilian first responder
model and/or identifying a set of offenses that no longer require traffic stops, and
can instead be responded to with mailed citations or notices to appear. This could
greatly reduce the number of people interacting with the criminal legal system at
both the district and municipal levels. Nationally, minor traffic violations are
among the most common types of law enforcement interactions. However,
numerous studies have shown that discretionary traffic stops not only have little
impact on public safety, but that they also greatly contribute to the racial
disparities in the criminal legal system and drive unnecessary and lethal use of
force.
55
Unarmed civilian traffic response units could focus on safety instead of
criminal law enforcement, and would be run by the department of transportation
or public works. Civilian responders could also handle collisions and be given the
authority to stop drivers to address traffic violations and/or safety concerns
55
Marsha Mercer, “Police ‘Pretext’ Traffic Stops Need to End, Some Lawmakers Say,” Pew Stateline,
September 3, 2020, https://perma.cc/8LWQ-4QXD.
54
This effort has been blueprinted by other cities. For example, as part of Atlanta’s effort to safely close
the City Detention Center, Atlanta City Council repealed a significant number of “quality-of-life”
ordinances that criminalized poverty and personal drug use. For more, see Neighbor Staff, “Atlanta City
Council repeals 40 outdated ordinances” Northside Neighbor, March 20, 2017,
https://www.mdjonline.com/neighbor_newspapers/northside_sandy_springs/atlanta-city-council-repea
ls-40-outdated-ordinances/article_b521ba86-0dab-11e7-b5ba-f338e3ddf757.html. For the smaller subset
of offenses that were converted to civil penalties, there was a concurrent effort to ensure that people
retained access to counsel in civil proceedings and that incarceration was not the default response to
unpaid civil penalties.
53
For a discussion of the disparate racial impact stemming from policies, procedures and bias in the
criminal legal system, see Elizabeth Hinton, LeShae Henderson, and Cindy Reed, An Unjust Burden: The
Disparate Treatment of Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System, (New York: Vera Institute of
Justice, 2018); and Susan Nembhard and Lily Robin, Racial and Ethnic Disparities throughout the
Criminal Legal System: A Result of Racist Policies & Discretionary Practices, (Washington, DC: The
Urban Institute, 2021). National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Reducing
Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice: Science, Practice, and Policy. Washington, DC: The National
Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26705.
39
without capacity for arrest and law enforcement.
56
In order to ensure that
nonappearance for traffic offenses does not continue to result in detention for so
many people, some of the provisions around court reminders, support and
delayed issuance of warrants should also be implemented.
5.1. As an alternative to issuing traffic tickets, implement a voucher program
to provide drivers with the resources to fix broken tail-lights or other
maintenance-related safety concerns. These vouchers would address the
problem directly while also preventing cycles of debt that often result
from expensive fines associated with traffic tickets.
57
5.2. Implement a Driver Accountability Program for people with
driving-related offenses that threaten public safety. Designed by the
Center for Court Innovation, the Driver Accountability Program increases
self-awareness of dangerous driving behavior, identifies root causes, and
helps participants change their beliefs and habits.
58
6. Alternatively, develop local law enforcement policies deprioritizing arrest and
enforcement for minor traffic violations with the goal of eliminating all
non-public safety stops.
6.1. End the practice of conducting searches during pretextual stops when
officers believe they smell marijuana.
7. Investigate the percent of the Lawrence and Douglas budgets that are derived
from fines, fees, and costs and identify alternative budgetary strategies where
necessary to avoid misaligned incentives.
II. Most women were admitted to jail for low-level, nonviolent offenses
◆ This is unsurprising given that most people admitted to the Douglas County jail
are detained on low-level, nonviolent charges. Still, the gendered impact of jailing
women with little or no public safety rationale merits further discussion.
◆ Studies have shown that women in jail have experienced high rates of
victimization and trauma. Nationally, 86 percent of women in jail are survivors of
58
The Center for Court Innovation found that participants in the Driver Accountability Program were 40
percent less likely to be rearrested for traffic-related offenses than drivers who had been arrested on
similar traffic-related offenses and had not gone through the program. See Amanda Berman, Driver
Accountability Program, (New York, NY: Center for Court Innovation, 2019).
57
A nonprofit in Minneapolis, Minnesota, implemented a voucher program to prevent punitive traffic
stops that disproportionately harm people without the financial resources to pay tickets or fix broken car
parts. See the Lights On! website, accessed October 27, 2022, https://lightsonus.org/about/.
56
Janie Har, “Berkeley Moves Toward Removing Police From Traffic Stops,” Associated Press, July 15,
2020,
https://apnews.com/article/police-reform-us-news-ap-top-news-berkeley-transportation-1fddb1955d5ce
8b7e60a6d4619dd214e; Rigel Robinson, Loris Droste, Ben Bartlett, and Jesse Arreguin, “BerkDOT:
Reimagining Transportation for a Racially Just Future,” Proposal to Berkeley City Council, Revised
Agenda Material (July 14, 2020); and Jill Cowan, “Berkeley Moves Closer to Ending Police Traffic Stops,”
New York Times, February 24, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/ berkeley-police.html;
and Dennis Romero, “Minneapolis to Limit Police Traffic Stops for Minor Violations,” NBC News, August
14, 2021, https://perma. cc/LL38-5ZWL.
40
sexual abuse, 77 percent have experienced partner violence, and 60 percent have
experienced caregiver violence.
59
◆ Nationwide, an estimated 80 percent of women in jail are mothers, and the
majority are the primary caregivers of their children.
60
This means that the
incarceration of women also has broader consequences for communities.
Recommendations:
1. Douglas County administrators report a lack of recreational and programming
space for the women detained in the jail. Given that most women are admitted for
low-level, nonviolent offenses, Douglas County should focus on investing in
community-based trauma-informed supportive services, which could serve as
alternatives to arrest and incarceration and offer support for people released
pretrial.
2. Prioritize non-custodial sentences, particularly for primary caregivers.
Research shows that people who serve sentences have higher recidivism rates
than similar people who are not incarcerated.
61
Children also suffer the collateral
consequences of incarceration, including economic instability, behavioral health
problems, poor physical health, homelessness and vulnerability to future
incarceration.
62
Maternal incarceration, specifically, is linked to a pronounced
impact on a child’s likelihood of future justice system involvement.
63
III. Pretrial lengths of stay could be reduced by expanding the use of
non-monetary conditions of release. This may also mitigate some of the
racially disparate impacts of detention and better serve public safety.
◆ The majority of people admitted pretrial (64 percent) were booked and released
within 24 hours. Black and Native American people were less likely to be released
the same day, however, and face longer median pretrial lengths of stay.
◆ Even short jail stays can make people more vulnerable to future arrest. This is
known as the “criminogenic” effect of incarceration. A person’s life can be
profoundly destabilized by even a few days in pretrial detention; consequences
escalate as the length of detention increases.
64
64
Christopher Lowenkamp, Marie VanNostrand, and Alexander Holsinger, The Hidden Costs of Pretrial
Detention (Houston, TX: Laura and John Arnold Foundation, 2013).
63
Melinda Tasca, Nancy Rodriguez, Marjorie S. Zatz, “Family and Residential Instability in the Context of
Paternal and Maternal Incarceration,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 38, no.3 (2011): 231-247. Several
states have worked to expand non-custodial sentencing of primary caregivers, who are overwhelmingly
mothers of dependent children. This includes Tennessee, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington.
62
Sara Wakefield, Christopher Wildeman, Children of the prison boom: mass incarceration and the
future of American inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
61
W.D. Bales and A.R. Piquero, “Assessing the Impact of Imprisonment on Recidivism,” Journal of
Experimental Criminology 8, no. 1 (2012): 71-101.
60
Wendy Sawyer and Wanda Bertram, Prisons and jails will separate millions of mothers from their
children in 2022 (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2022).
59
Shannon M. Lynch et al., “Women’s Pathways to Jail: The Roles and Intersections of Serious Mental
Illness and Trauma,” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of
Justice Assistance, 2012), 32.
41
Recommendations:
1. Currently, Pretrial Services determines supervision monitoring levels by
conducting a risk assessment prior to first appearance. This monitoring report is
then sent to the judge, district attorney and jail staff. People who are in custody
appear in front of the judge and District Attorney via Zoom for first appearance,
where the conditions of release are determined. People who have retained
counsel are represented at first appearance, otherwise bail decisions are made in
many cases without defense counsel present.
1.1. To minimize the number of people detained and total number of
bed-days, Douglas County should enable a subset of people who are
deemed low-risk to be released prior to first appearance. Given the
presumption that most low and moderate risk people will be released with
minimum conditions of supervision by pretrial services, all people
charged with nonperson misdemeanors and some nonperson felonies who
are given a low to moderate risk level could be released with court
reminders or minimum supervision by pretrial services until their court
date. For example, anyone charged with a nonperson misdemeanor, any
felony class 6-10 felony, or a class 4-5 drug felony who scores within the
low-risk band on the pretrial praxis should be released pre-judicial
presentation with administrative monitoring.
65
Anyone charged with a
qualifying offense who scores within the moderate-risk band should be
released prior to judicial presentation on a monitoring level no higher
than intensive monitoring.
66
Findings on risk, needs, and responsiveness
(RNR) show that for people who are deemed lower-risk, interactions with
the justice system beyond the lightest possible touch increases the
likelihood of future system contact, as does unnecessary pretrial
detention. For this reason, release should be expedited and first
appearance used to reassess the conditions of supervision and ensure that
they are appropriately tailored to each case. Currently, the risk
assessment tool recommends that people who are charged with a
misdemeanor, nonperson offense and who score low to moderate risk be
released on administrative monitoring, while those who score in the
high-risk category be released on enhanced monitoring. The above
recommendation is consistent with current practice, but moves the
release valve to prior to judicial presentation, thus reducing unnecessary
incarceration and destabilization during the period before first
appearance when people are waiting to see a judge. This process would
also free up limited judicial resources.
66
According to the Douglas County Criminal Justice Services Explanation of Pretrial Release Assessment
Process, enhanced monitoring, which is the next highest level above administrative monitoring, includes
telephone check ins no less than one time per month. The next level, intensive monitoring, includes case
management meetings up to four times per month, and could include electronic monitoring as ordered by
the Court.
65
According to the Douglas County Criminal Justice Services Explanation of Pretrial Release Assessment
Process, administrative monitoring includes monitoring for new arrest and court reminders.
42
1.2. Additionally, in accordance with RNR, the county should ensure that as
many people as possible are released without overly onerous or costly
conditions, such as electronic monitoring or mandatory drug testing,
which have been found to expose people to higher rates of pretrial failure
without improving appearance rates or reducing re-arrests.
67
We
recommend eliminating drug testing as a condition of release, and
imposing electronic monitoring in as narrow a set of cases as possible. For
people who would remain ineligible for release pre-judicial presentation,
recommended monitoring levels should be changed from a minimum of
intensive monitoring (current level) to a minimum of enhanced
monitoring, with more onerous conditions set only when there is a written
finding that they are reasonably necessary to protect the safety of another
person. This will both reduce the burden on pretrial services and the
likelihood of pretrial failure.
1.3. If the County continues to use a risk tool, it should be made clear in
written policy that the risk score should never be used as the sole basis for
detention, given that it shows a person’s risk of missing a court date or
getting rearrested absent any other intervention.
2. Prioritize in-person first appearances with counsel present whenever possible
rather than conducting court hearings via video from the jail. This is meant to
ensure that a person’s lawyer can consult with them, explain release conditions,
or otherwise communicate clearly. While remote video appearances have become
more ubiquitous in recent years, there is mixed evidence about their impact.
Some research suggests that judges impose significantly higher bond amounts
during proceedings over video, and that video appearances impact perceptions of
credibility.
68
For any hearings conducted via video, it is imperative that the
County enables private communication between an attor ney and their client such
that they can confer quickly during proceedings.
3. The establishment of Kansas Holistic Defenders is an important step in reducing
the number of people who appear in court without counsel. However, because
funding for indigent defense in felony cases is provided at the state level in
Kansas, Douglas County lawmakers should continue to pursue funding from the
Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense (BIDS) to establish holistic defense for
accused people across all charge categories.
4. Judicial actors should limit the imposition of money bail to cases in which there
is an imminent articulable risk to the physical safety of another person.
Non-financial conditions of release and referrals to services should be
individually tailored in each case to support court appearance and prevent willful
flight.
5. The Douglas County courts should eliminate the use of a bail schedule, which
precludes an individualized inquiry into the circumstances of each case and
68
Alicia Bannon and Janna Adelstein, Impact of Video Proceedings on Case Outcomes (New York, NY:
Brennan Center for Justice, 2020).
67
Aidan Cotter and Madeline Bailey, Successful Pretrial Systems Rely on Supportive Pretrial Services
(New York, NY: Vera Institute of Justice, 2022).
43
necessity of money bail. Instead, the courts should prioritize establishing
constitutionally adequate bail hearings.
69
5.1. At a hearing, a person accused of a crime should be given a meaningful
opportunity to be heard, present evidence and confront evidence against
them.
5.2. If a money bail is required, there should be either an individualized
finding that the person can afford to pay the amount (such that it will not
result in detention), or that the money bail amount is necessary to protect
the physical safety of another person or people.
70
5.3. If money bail is imposed, judicial actors should make written findings
regarding the reasons for the decision and make the findings available to
the person accused of a crime and to their lawyer.
5.4. In order to prevent unintentional wealth-based detention, the Courts
should establish automatic bond review hearings within 48 hours of first
appearance for anyone who has not been found by the Courts to be a clear
and convincing risk to the physical safety or another person or people, but
remains in jail because they cannot pay money bail or other financial
conditions of release.
6. Unless there is an identifiable risk to public safety or willful flight that cannot be
mitigated by other conditions, the District Attorney’s office should support
pretrial release. Data from Pretrial Services shows that the DA’s office opposed
release recommendations made by Pretrial Services in 29 percent of cases in
2021.
71
Given the successful outcomes demonstrated by Douglas County’s pretrial
services program, the rate of opposition by the DA’s office should be examined
and addressed.
IV. Violent charges contributed to 21 percent of pretrial jail bookings, and
should be handled with specific approaches meant to address the root
causes of the problem, rather than a one-size fits all approach. People
charged with violent offenses should still enjoy the presumption of
innocence.
◆ Among violent charges, the majority of admissions were for domestic battery.
Notably, in 46 percent of pretrial admissions for domestic battery, a person was
released after the charge was dismissed. This high dismissal rate may be tied to
mandatory arrest policies for alleged domestic battery, which often has the
71
The District Attorney’s office opposed release recommendations by Pretrial Services in 16% of cases in
2019, 11% in 2020, and 29% in 2021, according to a presentation by Dr. Matt Cravens, Douglas County,
Pretrial Release Program Evaluation, April 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoRRVRnWa6I.
70
In 2018, Vera began a pilot program in New York City court, which included an ability to pay
“calculator” meant to estimate how much bail a person could truly afford and in what form. At first
appearance, public defenders make referrals to the Bail Assessment specialist who uses the bail calculator
to interview people awaiting arraignment. For more information, see Sandra van den Heuvel, Anton
Robinson, Insha Rahman, A Means to an End (New York, NY: Vera Institute of Justice, 2019).
69
The elements of a bail hearing that comports with due process have been laid out by several courts. See,
for example, the Consent Order for Preliminary Injunction in Allison, et al. v. Allen, et al., No. 19-cv-1126
(US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina).
44
unintended consequence of criminalizing the person reporting harm in addition
to the alleged perpetrator. Additionally, survivors frequently decline to press
charges. In a survey that the National Domestic Violence Hotline conducted
about law enforcement responses to partner abuse with survivors, they found that
1 in 3 survivors surveyed reported feeling less safe after calling the police, and 1 in
4 reported they had been arrested or threatened with arrest when reporting
partner abuse or sexual assault to the police.
72
Recommendations:
1. Invest in community violence interruption and prevention programs, which have
demonstrated success at reducing gun violence.
73
2. Implement alternate or co-responses to Domestic Violence calls that address
safety concerns but that do not contribute to the criminalization of survivors, as is
often the case with current mandatory arrest for domestic battery policy. Use
these calls as opportunities for intervention and to connect survivors with
resources and care.
2.1. The Center for Court Innovation has created a set of guiding principles for
engagement and intervention with people who cause harm through
intimate partner violence to inform abusive partner intervention
programming and community response.
74
3. Establish or expand a diversion policy that directs prosecutors to divert people to
community-based restorative justice programs designed to repair harm when
both parties agree to participate.
75
3.1. Ensure diversion is not used as a tool to widen the net of the justice
system. If someone’s charges should otherwise have been declined or
dismissed, they should not be offered a diversion program.
3.2. Ensure that the diversion policy does not have eligibility requirements
based primarily on a person’s previous contact with the criminal legal
system. Black people are disproportionately likely to have had previous
contact with the system due to disproportionate policing, which can make
“criminal history” a racially inequitable criterion. Additionally, there may
be more services or programs available at the time of arrest than when a
person previously interacted with the system.
V. People are cycling in and out of jail for issues related to mental illness, drug and
alcohol use, and poverty.
◆ Over 30 percent of the people repeatedly booked into jail were facing charges that
are often related to unmet behavioral needs or social precarity, including
misdemeanor criminal trespass; misdemeanor DUI; felony possession of an
75
For key concepts, tools, and training materials pertaining to establishing a community-based restorative
justice program, see A Diversion Toolkit for Communities, (Impact Justice, 2019).
74
Center for Court Innovation, Guiding Principles for Engagement and Intervention with People Who
Cause Harm through Intimate Partner Violence (New York: Center for Court Innovation, May 2022).
73
Jeffrey A. Butts, Caterina Gouvis Roman, Lindsay Bostwick, and Jeremy R. Porter, “Cure Violence: A
Public Health Model to Reduce Gun Violence,” Annual Review of Public Health 36, no. 39-53 (2015).
72
TK Logan and Rob Valente, Who Will Help Me? Domestic Violence Survivors Speak Out About Law
Enforcement Responses (Washington, DC: National Domestic Violence Hotline, 2015).
45
opiate, opium, narcotic or stimulant; and misdemeanor interference with a law
enforcement officer. People with mental illness often have co-occurring substance
use and/or housing insecurity, making them more vulnerable to disorderly
conduct or disturbing the peace charges and other low-level offenses.
◆ Nearly half of the people repeatedly booked into jail were admitted due to failures
to appear and other kinds of administrative charges. Policy recommendations
regarding court appearance and supervision violations are discussed at greater
length below, focusing on systemic responses to underlying drivers and obstacles.
Recommendations:
1. Continue and expand the Housing First pilot for people who are chronically
housing insecure, particularly those who have mental health and/or substance
use disorder related needs. This entails placement for people directly from
homelessness into permanent, rather than transitional, housing where they can
access programs and services, but are not required to maintain sobriety as a
condition of being housed. An analysis of housing first programs found that the
approach reduced both jail bookings and emergency services, producing cost
savings that far surpassed program costs.
76
2. Prevent overdoses by investing in harm reduction rather than prioritizing
enforcement.
2.1. Jail cannot keep people safe from overdose; in fact people are more likely
to die by overdose in the weeks following release from jail or prison.
77
Instead, reducing harm and improving health requires drug-related
illness, injury, and overdose death prevention, as well as evidence-based
treatment for problematic use.
2.2. Naloxone, an FDA-approved generic drug, reverses an opioid overdose,
has no potential for abuse, and can be administered intranasally by
anyone. Equip mobile crisis response teams with Naloxone, and also
make it widely and freely available. Educate community members,
particularly those who use drugs or who have family members who use
drugs, on how to access and use it.
2.3. Fentanyl test strips and sterile syringe access programs also help reduce
drug-related injuries, illness, and death, and should also be widely
distributed.
77
A study conducted by Washington State in 1999-2003 found that during the two weeks following release
from prison, people were nearly 13 times more likely to die than the general population. Drug overdoses
are the most frequent cause. See Ingrid A. Binswanger, Marc F. Stern, Richard A. Deyo, Patrick J.
Heagerty, Allen Cheadle, Joann G. Elmore, Thomas D. Koepsell, “Release from Prison--a high risk of
death for former inmates,” New England Journal of Medicine 356, Issue 2 (2007): 157-165; and
Another study from North Carolina in 2000-2015 found overdose mortality was 40 times higher for
people in their first two weeks out of state prison compared to the general public. See Shabbar I.
Ranapurwala, Meghan E. Shanahan, Apostolos A. Alexandridis, Scott K. Proescholdbell, Rebecca B.
Naumann, Daniel Edwards Jr, and Stephen W. Marshall. "Opioid overdose mortality among former North
Carolina inmates: 2000–2015," American Journal of Public Health 108, no. 9 (2018): 1207-1213.
76
Debra Srebnik,Tara Connor, and Laurie Sylla, “A Pilot Study of the Impact of Housing First–Supported
Housing for Intensive Users of Medical Hospitalization and Sobering Services,” American Journal of
Public Health 103, no. 2 (2013): 316–321.
46
2.4. County legislators should pass a local Good Samaritan ordinance to
protect people from some criminal penalties when they seek medical
assistance for drug-related crises, including when they are witness to an
overdose. One key reason people do not call 911 for help is fear of arrest
and prosecution stemming from their own use or possession of drugs.
Kansas is one of only three U.S. states that does not have a Good
Samaritan law.
78
3. Effectively treat substance use and broader behavioral health needs by
emphasizing a public health approach that recognizes the reality of relapse.
3.1. Divert 911 calls and/or officer interactions stemming solely from alleged
drug use to the new Treatment and Recovery Center instead of using
arrest and booking. Incorporate dispatch diversion into the rollout of
988–the recently established national 24-hour suicide and crisis response
line.
3.2. Prioritize early diversion to care for people struggling with substance use
disorder (SUD) and other behavioral health needs. To ensure equitable
access, all people facing booking should be screened using an
evidence-based tool, and referred to a clinician for assessment for
appropriate levels of care and service. Taking a plea should not be a
requirement of diversion, and criminal legal actors such as judges and
prosecutors should have limited to no discretion to make clinical
decisions about the appropriate length and type of treatment or
programming.
79
3.3. Pilot alternatives to incarceration (ATIs) for people struggling with
stimulant drug use such as methamphetamines, for which
medication-assisted treatment is not currently available. Positive
incentives including material rewards for adherence to a plan have shown
promising results. This is called contingency management, and is among
the interventions recommended by The Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) for treatment of stimulant use
disorders.
80
3.4. Ensure that incarceration is not used as a sanction for drug use for people
in recovery. The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimates that
80
See Zachary Siegel, “What If We Pay People to Stop Using Drugs?,” The New Republic, February 25,
2021, https://newrepublic.com/article/161325/pay-people-stop-using-drugs; and Claire Ronsley, Seonaid
Nolan, Rod Knight, Kanna Hayashi, Jano Klimas, Alex Walley, Evan Wood, and Nadia Fairbairn,
“Treatment of stimulant use disorder: A systematic review of reviews,” PLoS ONE 15, no. 6 (2020).
79
Blue Earth County, Minnesota has operated the Yellow Line Project (YLP) since 2018. The project
launched with an emphasis on screenings in the pre-booking area, before people crossed the “yellow line”
of the jail door. The project has since expanded to include street-level screenings and screenings for
people within three days of booking into jail. For more, see the Yellow Line Project’s website, accessed
October 27, 2022, https://www.yellowlineproject.com/.
78
A review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that states with good samaritan laws had
lower rates of opioid-related overdose deaths after enactment of the laws and compared to the small
handful of states without such laws. See U.S. Government Accountability Office, Drug Misuse:
Most States Have Good Samaritan Laws and Research Indicates They May Have Positive Effects
(Washington, DC: GAO-21-248, 2021).
47
people in recovery relapse 40-60 percent of the time, sometimes more
than once. As long as a person remains connected to programming and/or
services, relapse should not indicate failure to complete a diversion
program or other alternative to incarceration.
3.5. Invest in more inpatient and out-patient substance use disorder treatment
programs in the county.
VI. A substantial portion of the people admitted to jail pretrial on drug
possession charges were facing low-level charges.
◆ 40 percent of pretrial drug possession admissions were for misdemeanor
charges,primarily for possession of a hallucinogenic drug, followed by drug
paraphernalia. A large body of research has emerged around the use of psilocybin
mushrooms and other psychoactive substances, which have been used both
medicinally and ceremonially for thousands of years and are not considered
addictive. Not only do psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) have very
low levels of toxicity, but epidemiological studies have also shown lower rates of
mental health disorders and suicide among people who have used them.
81
Recommendations:
1. Pass local ordinances decriminalizing personal drug possession, and invest in
accurate drug education and safety-planning. Alternatively, develop local law
enforcement policies deprioritizing arrest and enforcement for psychoactive
substances.
VII. DUI is a strong driver of pretrial jail admissions but has less of an impact on
pretrial bed-days.
◆ Although most people admitted pretrial for DUI-related charges were released
the same day, bookings with a DUI top charge made up 19 percent of overall
admissions, thus accounting for a substantial amount of law enforcement time
and jail resources to book, process, and release people. Additionally, people aged
18 to 25–a population with specific needs–accounted for a disproportionate share
of those admitted with a DUI top charge.
Recommendations:
1. Law enforcement should develop a written policy to divert first-time DUI arrests
to a sobering center with referral to services, when possible. Sobering centers
allow people who are inebriated or, in some cases, under the influence of drugs,
to sober up while offering connections to resources including recovery
programs.
82
In Douglas County, the Treatment Recovery Center could potentially
be used for this purpose, or a different facility can be used to serve this need. For
people who are not diverted pre-booking, infrastructure for diversion to
treatment should still be made available post arrest and/or booking.
82
Suzanne V. Jarvis, Leonard Kincaid, Arlo F. Weltge, Mike Lee, Scott Basinger, “Public Intoxication:
Sobering Centers as an Alternative to Incarceration, Houston, 2010-2017,” American Journal of Public
Health 109, no. 4 (2019), 597-599.
81
Drug Policy Alliance, Psilocybin Mushrooms Factsheet, (Washington, DC: Drug Policy Alliance, 2017).
48
2. Douglas County should consider expanding accessible public transportation
options to prevent intoxicated driving–for example, by expanding the regular
fixed-route bus service hours, which currently only run Monday - Saturday from
6 a.m to 8 p.m. hours in Lawrence.
83
Although Lawrence does offer a night line
that runs Monday-Saturday from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., this service must be scheduled
in advance by calling a phone number, and the fare is double the regular bus fare,
both potential disincentives for intoxicated individuals seeking public
transportation options.
3. Douglas County should work with the University of Kansas, Haskell Indian
Nations University and Baker University to ensure that the student population is
being educated and supported in reducing risky alcohol consumption.
VIII. Failures to appear, probation violations, and remands are significant
drivers of the jail population, together accounting for almost a third of all jail
admissions from 2017 to 2021
◆ Almost a quarter of pretrial jail admissions were due solely to nonappearance
(FTA), the most common top charge driving bookings into the jail. FTAs were
also the most common top charge for admissions from municipal court. The
Douglas County Risk Assessment Tool also considers both previous FTA arrests
and pending FTA warrants when assigning a risk score, making people less likely
to be released without paying bail.
84
Evidence shows that most people do not
appear in court because of barriers such as a lack of transportation, childcare or
an inability to take time off of work, or because they forget their court dates or
don’t understand the consequences of not appearing. This suggests that there are
systemic interventions that could more effectively support court appearance than
simply relying on FTA warrants.
◆ Probation violations were the fifth most common top charge overall, and the
fourth most common top charge for admissions from district court. Probation
violations resulted in a median length of stay of 18.5 days for people who were
held for 24 hours or longer, suggesting that probation is not currently serving as
an effective alternative to incarceration. Concerns about lengthy periods of
detention after alleged probation violations were previously raised in a 2018
report submitted to the Douglas County Board of Commissioners by Dr. Allen
Beck. This analysis suggests that problems associated with probation violations
continue to impact the jail population.
85
Recommendations:
1. Implement portable court date rescheduling practice across courts and law
enforcement agencies, as endorsed by both Sheriff Armbrister and Chief
Lockhart. Portable court date rescheduling, if approved by the judges, would
enable officers to reschedule people with FTAs for new court dates on the spot
85
Allen R. Beck, Recommendations for Improving the Criminal Case Processing of Inmates in the
Douglas County Jail (Kansas City, MO: Justice Concepts Inc, 2018).
84
As described in Douglas County Criminal Justice Services, Explanation of the Pretrial Release
Assessment Process, provided to the Vera Institute of Justice via email in March, 2022.
83
Lawrence Transit Guide, The University of Kansas and the City of Lawrence, August 2022.
49
using either a mobile phone app or filling out a brief rescheduling form that can
then be entered into the system, thus reducing unnecessary jail bookings in
response to failures to appear.
2. Allow attorneys to stand in for clients at hearings where their attendance is not
necessary (at most calendared appearances a person appears before a judge and
receives a new court date, but does not participate in any formal plea negotiations
that require attendance).
3. Enable judges to delay issuing a warrant in a subset of cases to allow a person’s
lawyer, family members, or the courts themselves to produce them within 24
hours.
86
4. Fund and implement additional court resources that will help increase
appearance, including:
4.1. Expand court hours for both district and municipal courts so that people
who work or have caregiver responsibilities can appear either in the
evenings or on weekends.
4.2. Implement text and phone call reminders for court appearances, and
follow up with individuals immediately following a missed court
appearance to reschedule.
4.3. Provide rides to court, either via transportation passes or providing a
bus/van to pick people up on their scheduled court dates. This can be
funded through community-based organizations, rather than through the
criminal legal system.
87
4.4. Provide childcare at court so that people with caregiver responsibilities do
not face additional barriers to appearance. Similarly, this is an
opportunity to contract community-based organizations rather than
expand the criminal legal system.
4.5. Adequately fund a holistic public defender’s office to staff both municipal
and district court so that everyone has access to an attorney who can
communicate court scheduling changes, appearance challenges, and
contact clients after a missed appearance.
87
In 2019, Dakota County expanded access to transportation in order to ensure no one missed a court
appearance due to lack of transportation. The program provided free shuttles on a loop to all
community-members receiving county services and their families, in addition to those going to court or
probation meetings. The loop stopped at both the court and jail, among other transit hubs. See Tim
Harlow, “Dakota County offers free bus rides to court, county services,” Star Tribune, December 30, 2019,
https://www.startribune.com/dakota-county-offers-free-bus-rides-to-court-county-services/566552852/
?refresh%3Dtrue&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1666903079812995&usg=AOvVaw0V04QZq_xhYP_VUGN4
S7sU.
86
In Michigan, reforms passed in 2021 reduce the use of warrants for nonappearance by making a
summons to appear in court the default method for initiating a case against people charged with
nonviolent offenses. Additionally, people who miss court for the first time are given two days to
reschedule their appearance before a warrant is issued, and any people with low-level warrants up to a
year old are able to show up to the courthouse and be arraigned or receive a new court date without being
arrested. See Jake Horowitz, Michigan Enacts Landmark Jail Reforms, (Washington, DC: Pew Charitable
Trusts, 2021).
50
4.6. Eliminate the use of fines and fees so that people do not avoid court out of
fear they will be remanded due to inability to pay court-mandated fines or
fees.
5. Prevent bookings for individuals who have warrants due to failure to pay court
fines, fees, or surcharges by reducing or eliminating the use of financial
sanctions, eliminating incarceration as a response to non-payment, and
conducting indigency hearings at the earliest stage possible so that court debt
may be waived. Create a presumption of indigency in a set of circumstances, for
example in which a person is currently receiving public benefits, is housing
insecure, or has recently returned from incarceration.
5.1. To the extent that financial sanctions/fees remain in use, establish full
court hearings and require a finding that a person had the ability to pay
without incurring significant financial hardship and chose not to before
jailing them for nonpayment.
88
6. Provide adequate counsel for all people going through municipal and district
courts so that people do not plead to probation for charges that might otherwise
be dismissed. Divert cases to alternate sanctions rather than incarceration or
probation, where possible.
7. Prohibit incarceration for technical violations, which are violations for
noncompliance with conditions of probation. These violations are not in
themselves illegal and would not constitute a crime for anyone who is not on
probation (e.g. a missed appointment, a positive urinalysis, missed payment of
fees, etc).
89
Nationally, people on probation have to comply with an average of 10
to 20 or more different conditions, which can be overly burdensome and make
people especially vulnerable to committing a technical violation.
90
8. Establish probation caps and implement automatic earned good time credits,
which enable people to earn time off their probation term for compliance, such as
maintaining employment or completing programming.
91
To increase equity and
reduce the burden on probation officers, make earned credits automatic (e.g.
everyone receives 30 days off a probation term for every 30 days of compliance).
Longer terms of probation have been shown to be counterproductive, since
91
For limits on probation terms and information on earned compliance credits, see Kendra Bradner,
Vincent Schiraldi, Natasha Mejia, and Evangeline Lopoo, More Work to Do, (New York: Columbia Justice
Lab, 2020), 13; Michael P. Jacobson, Vincent Schiraldi, Reagan Daly, and Emily Hotez, Less Is More:
How Reducing Probation Populations Can Improve Outcomes, (Cambridge, MA: Executive Session on
Community Corrections, the Harvard Kennedy School, 2017), 11; Cecelia Klingele, “Rethinking
Community Supervision,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 103, issue 11 (2013), 1062-1063;
Ellen Dinsmore, Linnea Lassiter, Lisa Margulies, Celeste Gander, Juliene James, Cybele Kotonias, Amy
Solomon, and Brian Elderbroom, Policy Reforms Can Strengthen Community Supervision, (Washington,
DC: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2020), 24, 29; and The Potential of Community Corrections, (New York, NY:
Vera Institute of Justice, 2013), 27; Adam Gelb and Connie Utada, For Better Results, Cut Correctional
Populations, (Washington DC: Pew Charitable Trusts, August 25, 2017).
90
Ibid.
89
Alex Roth, Sandhya Kajeepeta, and Alex Boldin, The Perils of Probation: How Supervision Contributes
to Jail Populations (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2021).
88
See Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983).
51
onerous conditions make risk of revocation due to technical violations especially
high.
92
Summary of Recommendations by Decision-Point
Pre-Arrest
1. Align cite and release policies across police departments and direct officers to utilize the
practice in more eligible cases.
2. Redesign the summons form to make it more accessible and reduce confusion.
3. Invest in community violence interruption and prevention programs.
4. Use alternate responders who are trained to address mental and behavioral health calls
to respond to appropriate 911 and 988 calls.
5. Divert DUI cases to a sobering center with referral to services.
6. Review municipal code and strike ordinance violations that would be better dealt with
outside the criminal legal system.
7. Pass local ordinances decriminalizing personal drug possession.
8. Invest in harm reduction and community-based resources.
9. Pass a Good Samaritan ordinance to protect people seeking emergency responders
during a potential overdose.
10. Implement alternate responses to domestic violence calls that address safety concerns
but that do not contribute to the criminalization of victims, as is often the case with
current mandatory arrest for domestic battery policy.
11. Establish civilian traffic response units that handle collisions and minor traffic violations
with a safety-first approach, while reducing or eliminating non-public safety traffic stops
by law enforcement.
Pre-Charging
1. Divert people who would be better served by mental or behavioral health treatment by
conducting behavioral health screens at booking for all individuals arrested by law
enforcement and brought to the jail.
2. Divert people with public safety traffic-related violations to a free Driver Accountability
Group program at booking.
93
93
Financial sanctions, like tickets or fines, trap poor people in the system and have little to no impact on
changing the underlying behavior that led to the traffic stop. Diversion programs, like the Driver
92
James Byrne, Adam Gelb, and Jake Horowitz, Maximum Impact: Targeting Supervision on
Higher-Risk People, Places and Times (Washington, DC: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2009), 2-3,; Todd R.
Clear, Patricia M. Harris, and S. Christopher Baird, “Probationer Violations and Officer Response,”
Journal of Criminal Justice 20, no. 1 (1992), 1-12, 7; M. Kevin Gray, Monique Fields, and Sheila Royo
Maxwell, “Examining Probation Violations: Who, What, and When,” Crime & Delinquency 47, no. 4
(2001), 537-557, 550-551; Cecelia Klingele, “Understanding Revocation from Community Supervision,” in
Ex-offenders Under Watch (Milwaukee, WI: Badger Institute, 2019), 4, 12; Ellen Dinsmore, Linnea
Lassiter, Lisa Margulies, Celeste Gander, Juliene James, Cybele Kotonias, Amy Solomon, and Brian
Elderbroom, Policy Reforms Can Strengthen Community Supervision, (Washington, DC: Pew Charitable
Trusts, 2020), 24; Michelle S. Phelps, “Ending Mass Probation,” Future of Children vol. 28, no.1, 2018,
125-146, 130; and Barbara Sims and Mark Jones, “Predicting Success or Failure on Probation: Factors
Associated with Felony Probation Outcomes,” Crime & Delinquency 43, no. 3 (1997), 314-327, 322-324.
52
3. Establish or expand a Prosecutor declination policy that directs prosecutors to decline
referred cases stemming from unmet needs related to poverty, substance use,
homelessness, or mental health.
94
4. Establish or expand a Prosecutor declination policy that directs prosecutors to decline
referred cases stemming from pretextual stops.
5. Establish or expand a diversion policy that directs prosecutors to divert people to
community-based restorative justice programs designed to repair harm when both
parties agree to participate.
95
Bail-Setting
6. Enable a subset of people who are deemed low-risk to be released prior to first
appearance, and a subset of people deemed moderate-risk to be released with conditions
prior to first appearance.
7. Eliminate the use of drug testing as a condition of pretrial release, and reduce the use of
electronic monitoring.
8. Prioritize in-person first appearances with counsel present whenever possible rather
than conducting court hearings via video from the jail.
9. Pursue funding to ensure holistic defense for accused people across charge categories.
10. Unless there is an identifiable risk to public safety or willful flight that can not be
mitigated by other conditions, the District Attorney’s office should support pretrial
release.
11. Limit the imposition of money bail to cases in which there is an imminent articulable risk
to the physical safety of another person. Individually tailor non-financial conditions of
release and referrals to services to support court appearance and prevent wilful flight.
12. Eliminate the use of a bail schedule, which precludes an individualized inquiry into the
circumstances of each case and necessity of money bail. Instead, prioritize
constitutionally adequate bail hearings.
96
13. Establish automatic bond review hearings within 48 hours of first appearance for anyone
who has not been found by the Courts to be a clear and convincing risk to the physical
safety or another person or people, but remains in jail because they cannot pay money
bail or other financial conditions of release.
14. Implement a daily look-back docket to identify whose holds have been lifted or could be
quickly addressed.
96
The elements of a bail hearing that comports with due process have been laid out by several courts. See,
for example, the Consent Order for Preliminary Injunction in Allison, et al. v. Allen, et al., No. 19-cv-1126
(US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina).
95
For key concepts, tools, and training materials pertaining to establishing a community-based restorative
justice program, see A Diversion Toolkit for Communities, (Impact Justice, 2019).
94
See, for example, the Suffolk County (Boston) District Attorney’s Office’s policy to decline 15 charges,
including drug possession, intent to distribute, trespass, and breaking and entering into a vacant property,
Rachael Rollins, The Rachael Rollins Policy Memo (Boston, MA: Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office,
2019).
Accountability Program established by the Center for Court Innovation, improve equity, reduce case
processing time, and have been found to be 40 percent more effective than both tickets and arrest at
preventing future traffic-related system contact, see Amanda Berman, Driver Accountability Program
(New York, NY: Center for Court Innovation, 2019).
53
Failure to Appear and Failure to Pay
1. Redesign summons forms to ensure they are clear and user-friendly.
97
2. Implement portable court date rescheduling practice across courts and law enforcement
agencies, as endorsed by both Sheriff Armbrister and Chief Lockhart.
3. Allow attorneys to stand in for clients at hearings where their attendance is not
necessary.
4. Enable judges to delay issuing a warrant in a subset of cases to allow a person’s lawyer,
family members, or the courts themselves to produce them within 24 hours.
5. Fund and implement court resources that will help increase appearance, including:
a. Expanded court hours for both district and municipal courts so that people who
work or have caregiver responsibilities can appear either in the evenings or on
weekends.
b. Text and phone call reminders for court appearances, and follow up with
individuals immediately following a missed court appearance to reschedule.
c. Rides to court, either via transportation passes or providing a bus/van to pick
people up on their scheduled court dates. This can be funded through
community-based organizations, rather than through the criminal legal system.
d. Childcare at court so that people with caregiver responsibilities do not face
additional barriers to appearance. Similarly, this is an opportunity to contract
community-based organizations rather than expand the criminal legal system.
e. A holistic public defender’s office at both the municipal and district court levels
so that everyone has access to an attorney who can communicate court
scheduling changes, appearance challenges, and contact clients after a missed
appearance.
f. Eliminate the use of fines and fees so that people do not avoid court out of fear
they will be remanded due to inability to pay court-mandated fines or fees.
6. Prevent bookings for individuals who have warrants due to failure to pay court fines,
fees, or surcharges by reducing or eliminating the use of financial sanctions and
conducting indigency hearings at the earliest stage possible so that court debt may be
waived.
a. To the extent that financial sanctions/fees remain in use, establish full court
hearings and require a finding that a person had the ability to pay and chose not
to before jailing them for nonpayment.
98
Probation
1. Provide adequate counsel for all people going through municipal and district courts so
that people do not plead to probation for charges that might otherwise be dismissed.
2. Divert cases to alternate sanctions rather than overuse probation as a means to force
pleas.
3. Prohibit incarceration for technical violations, which are violations for noncompliance
with conditions of probation. These violations are not in themselves illegal and would
98
Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983).
97
Jason Tashea, “Text-message reminders are a cheap and effective way to reduce pretrial detention,”
American Bar Association Journal, (2018).
54
not constitute a crime for anyone who is not on probation (e.g. a missed appointment, a
positive urinalysis, missed payment of fees, etc).
99
4. Establish probation caps and implement automatic earned good time credits, which
enable people to earn time off their probation term for compliance, such as maintaining
employment or completing programming.
100
Sentencing
1. Offer alternative sentences that divert people out of custodial sentences and address root
causes.
2. Establish a net of charges for which there is a presumption of non-custodial sentences.
3. Prioritize non-custodial sentences, particularly for primary caregivers.
100
For limits on probation terms and information on earned compliance credits, see Kendra Bradner,
Vincent Schiraldi, Natasha Mejia, and Evangeline Lopoo, More Work to Do, (New York: Columbia Justice
Lab, 2020), 13; Michael P. Jacobson, Vincent Schiraldi, Reagan Daly, and Emily Hotez, Less Is More:
How Reducing Probation Populations Can Improve Outcomes, (Cambridge, MA: Executive Session on
Community Corrections, the Harvard Kennedy School, 2017), 11; Cecelia Klingele, “Rethinking
Community Supervision,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 103, issue 11 (2013), 1062-1063;
Ellen Dinsmore, Linnea Lassiter, Lisa Margulies, Celeste Gander, Juliene James, Cybele Kotonias, Amy
Solomon, and Brian Elderbroom, Policy Reforms Can Strengthen Community Supervision, (Washington,
DC: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2020), 24, 29; The Potential of Community Corrections, (New York, NY: Vera
Institute of Justice, 2013), 27; and Adam Gelb and Connie Utada, For Better Results, Cut Correctional
Populations, (Washington DC: Pew Charitable Trusts, August 25, 2017).
99
Alex Roth, Sandhya Kajeepeta, and Alex Boldin, The Perils of Probation: How Supervision Contributes
to Jail Populations (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2021).
55
Data Recommendations
This section provides recommendations related to data collection, database improvement, and
data transparency. These recommendations are intended to either cut down on time spent
cleaning and processing data for analysis; broaden the set of questions that the data can be used
to answer; increase the accuracy of any potential future analysis; and increase transparency and
oversight into local jail dynamics.
General recommendations for improvements to the Spillman Jail Management System
1. Add a drop-down menu that lists out the possible options for charges that someone can
be booked in on. While many charges already have standardized language, some charges
in the dataset currently use non-standard phrasing, capitalization, acronyms, etc.
requiring data cleaning before data can be analyzed.
2. Add a field to capture more detailed information about charge severity than the charge
class that is currently tracked (for example, specifying that a charge is a “level 5 person
felony” rather than just “felony”). If possible, this field should be auto-populated based
on the charge information. The Kansas Sentencing Commission (KSC) publishes files
with the detailed severity classification for every felony and misdemeanor charge in the
Kansas criminal code–as well as for anticipatory versions of each charge (attempt,
conspiracy, and solicitation). These files are available for download via the Kansas
Sentencing Commission website.
101
3. Add a way of either identifying the most serious charge on a booking or ranking the
charges based on a pre-established severity ranking when they are entered into the
system at booking. Having charge rankings or a most serious charge flag built into the
database would cut down significantly on the time needed to process data as it would
remove the need for the “top charge methodology” described in detail in the appendix to
this report.
4. Add a field to document the original charge and current status of the original charge for
people booked in on a failure to appear, probation/parole violation, warrant, or remand.
Currently the system does not include information about the original or underlying
charge for people who are booked into jail with a probation or parole violation, remand,
warrant, or failure to appear (either alone or among other charges). Having information
about the original or underlying charge would make it easier to assess how many people
are booked into jail for technical (non-criminal) violations and to understand the types of
underlying charges driving admissions for administrative charges.
5. Add fields for bond type, bond status (i.e. bond set, bond paid, etc.), updated bond
amount, and bond updated date.
6. Improvements to how demographic information is collected:
a. Add an option for “some other race” in race.
b. Add an option for “non-binary/other” in gender.
c. Add a field to capture whether or not someone is homeless or housing insecure at
the time of booking.
Police at booking
101
See files labeled “felony listings” and “misdemeanor listings” at the following: Kansas Sentencing
Commission, Reports: 2011 Criminal Code Recodification, (Topeka, KS, 2011).
56
1. Ensure police officers have information about the nature of warrants so that they can opt
to cite and release rather than book people into jail whenever possible. Ensure police
officers are provided with up-to-date information on all charges eligible for cite and
release.
2. Document in police records if the encounter led to a result other than arrest (cite and
release, referral to a program, no action).
Intake officer at the jail
1. Adopt a standard method to capture race and gender at intake (i.e. for example, ask the
person to self-identify).
2. Adopt a standard method to capture homeless status or housing insecurity at intake (for
example, if an individual has not had their own place with a lease, ownership interest or
occupancy agreement in the last 60 days).
3. Flag the most serious charge on the booking when entering charge information. Note:
the most serious charge should be based on a pre-established severity ranking (as
described above in recommended changes to the Spillman system) rather than based on
the intake officer’s determination.
4. Capture information about the original/underlying charge and current status of the
original charge for people booked in on a failure to appear, probation/parole violation,
warrant, or remand. If possible, the original/underlying charge should be automatically
populated if the information is available in the jail management system.
Data analysis & dashboards
1. Integrate top charge algorithm or process in an ongoing way, such as once a week.
2. Consider using more descriptive charge categories (i.e. separating out drug possession
from drug manufacturing charges, re-classifying the “not listed elsewhere” charges, etc.)
3. Pursue further analysis and/or integration of case/court data and probation data.
4. Dashboards:
a. Incorporate information about top charge where possible.
b. Incorporate filter for judicial status, so that information can be viewed for people
held pretrial versus those serving sentences. Separate out probation and parole
violations into their own judicial status.
c. Present information on length of stay by charge category and judicial status
rather than generally.
d. Consider using people-first language (i.e. avoid the terms “inmate” and
“offender”).
e. Consider using the term “charge” rather than “offense” to reflect that most people
in jail have not been convicted.
f. Remove information about education level from the dashboard, as this is not
necessarily useful for the public and potentially stigmatizing.
g. Considering adding a visual on the number of people booked into the jail more
than once.
5. Investigate the revenue incentives around traffic stops and other enforcement priorities
and seek to replace revenue from fines, fees, and costs with an alternate funding strategy.
Data transparency
1. Douglas County and the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council should consider
developing and adopting a set of principles or a policy around making timely and
57
relevant data and analysis about the local criminal legal system publicly available. This
could be accompanied by trainings for the community about how to understand any
existing and future dashboards and data to explore local criminal justice issues.
2. Consider making the dataset for current dashboards publicly available for download
(cleaned, anonymized).
3. Establish agreements that support data sharing between local criminal legal system
actors, including but not limited to the Sheriff’s Office, local courts, pretrial services, and
public health agencies.
4. Build processes and metrics to track implementation of new practices:
a. Cite and release
b. Diversion
c. Reduced probation terms and enforcement
d. Changes to FTA warrants
e. Bail practices
f. Reduction of repeat bookings
Community-based oversight
1. Community-based organizations in Douglas County should consider working with local
partners (including policy groups, university departments, Vera, and others) to build a
clear monitoring and evaluation plan for new policies that are implemented to address
specific issues in the local criminal legal system (such as cite & release, diversion,
decriminalization, FTA reform, bail reform). Any evaluation plans should include, at
minimum:
a. Input from people with direct experience of the local criminal legal system about
what reform and progress would look like and how success should be measured.
b. A clear statement of the goal and expectations of the policy or policies being
considered for implementation.
c. Clear parameters on the population(s) that would be most directly impacted by
the policy or policies being considered.
d. Baseline information on pre-reform metrics, including but not limited to jail
admissions, as well as targets for success, and a plan for assessing the relative
impacts of policy reforms on certain groups, such as by race, gender, and legal
status.
e. A plan for periodically assessing and publicly sharing progress along predefined
metrics. This should include quantitative metrics (for example, percent of
admissions with an FTA charge), as well as qualitative metrics that help assess
the degree to which reforms promote fair treatment, a sense of dignity, and equal
access to services.
f. Plan for assessing changes that cannot easily be captured using metrics, including
changes in how people experience the local criminal legal system and identifying
local contextual factors that may play a part in promoting or hindering the
success of a new policy.
g. Plan for making the results of the evaluation publicly available in a timely
manner.
h. A process to secure commitments from county agencies to present and share
evaluation frameworks, reports, methods, and data.
58
Appendix. Methodology
Data Sources
The analysis presented in this memo relies on a dataset that Vera received from the Douglas
County Criminal Justice Coordinating Commission (CJCC). The dataset contains anonymized
information about all people released from the Douglas County jail and their charges between
January 1, 2017 and February 9, 2022. This dataset includes information about each person’s
gender, race/ethnicity, age, and education level. For each booking, it also includes information
about how long each person stayed in jail and information about each charge on a booking. For
each charge, the dataset includes the following: whether each person was being held before trial
or serving a sentence in jail; whether the case was a district or municipal court case; whether the
case was a traffic or criminal case; the release reason for each charge; a description of the
charge; and the charge class.
General Cleaning Procedures
● The raw dataset included information about 10,503 individuals, 21,104 bookings, and
40,402 charges.
● The final dataset used for analysis is limited to people who were released from the
Douglas County jail one or more times during the 5-year period from January 1, 2017 to
December 31, 2021. This represents information about 10,376 people, 20,794 bookings
(since some people were booked into jail multiple times during this time period), and
39,809 charges (since some people had multiple charges on their booking).
● We manually standardized the open text for charge description to improve consistency
within this data field. This primarily consisted of creating consistency in capitalization of
text and abbreviations (e.g., viol vs. violate vs. violation or poss vs. possess vs.
possession).
Data Limitations
● The data do not distinguish between people who were admitted to jail on a new charge,
and those who were admitted for a number of other types of violations that do not
typically, by themselves, constitute new criminal charges–including failures to appear,
probation and parole violations, bond failures, remands, and warrants or detainers.
Throughout this document, we refer to these types of charges as “administrative
charges.” A further limitation of the analysis is that the originating charge is not available
in the jail management system for people who were admitted for these charges.
Generally, we assumed that if one of these charges was accompanied by a new criminal,
municipal or traffic charge on a booking, that the new charge was driving the arrest
rather than the administrative charge. If the administrative charge was listed alone, or
only accompanied by other administrative charges, it was considered to be the most
serious charge–and the person was considered to be booked for an administrative charge
alone. This limitation affects the top charge classification in that, for people admitted on
administrative charges, we are not able to assess the severity of their originating
charges–for example, to distinguish between someone who was admitted for a failure to
appear on a previous felony charge versus a previous traffic charge. However, this
59
limitation is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the booking with the originating charge
would presumably still be represented in the analysis the first time they were booked.
See Step 5 below for more details about our treatment of these types of charges in the
methodology.
● The data does not provide an indication of which charge is the “most serious” or
“controlling” charge, or the charge that is most likely driving the arrest. Below, we detail
the methodology we developed to assign a top charge to each booking in order to analyze
the charges that are contributing the most to lengths of stay and to the average daily jail
population.
● The “pretrial” label may be inaccurate in a small number of municipal court cases.
Charges originating from municipal court are initially logged as “pretrial” by jail staff,
even though some people may actually be serving short-term periods of imprisonment
under a temporary jail commitment or “shock probation.”
102
In other cases, a small
number of people may be opting to preemptively serve time in jail in order to later
receive credit for time served. As a result, some people’s judicial status may be labeled as
“pretrial” even though they are technically serving a sentence. Although it is difficult to
identify in the data how many people may have an inaccurate pretrial label, jail staff
indicate that this is likely a small number of people and that data practices have reduced
this problem in recent years.
103
Assigning “Most Serious Charge”
The data extracts that Vera received from the Douglas County CJCC contain every charge for
every person that was released from jail. In order to determine which charge is likely driving the
arrest, Vera developed an algorithm utilizing a weighted sum model to assign a “most serious
charge” for each booking. We assigned weights to three variables: charge class, charge severity,
and charge category. The weights were designed to ensure that charges with a higher ranking in
class (e.g., felony) would always have a higher total score than another charge of lower ranking
in class (e.g., misdemeanor), even if the lower ranked class charge had higher rankings in
severity or category.
104
Each charge is then assigned a total score based on the sum of the sub-scores for each of the
three variables–with the charge with the highest score per booking identified as the top charge.
In the example booking with four charges below, charge 4 would be the most serious charge
according to our scoring; charge 2 would be next highest, followed by charge 3 and 1.
104
It is possible that a misdemeanor-level charge could, in some cases, be considered to be
equally or more severe than a felony-level charge, depending on whether the misdemeanor charge was
violent or included weapons, for example. However, the rationale for prioritizing charge class first in
the ranking of charges (prior to consideration of charge severity and charge category) is that the charge
class frequently corresponds to severity in sentencing guidelines. See Kansas Sentencing Commission,
Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Desk Reference Manual 2021, (Topeka, KS, 2021).
103
In the dataset used for analysis, 257 people (1.2 percent of total admissions) were admitted to jail
pretrial and then released for “time served,” which may represent this population.
102
Shock probation refers to the practice whereby a court will order a person to serve a period of
incarceration followed by a period of parole or probation supervision. This practice is typically reserved
for first-time offenders, juvenile or youth offenders, or those charged with minor crimes.
60
Criteria
Total
Score
C
1
: charge class
(range from 0-4)
C
2
: charge
severity (range
from 0-26)
C
3
: charge
category (range
from 1-33)
Weighting
0.99
0.0099
0.000099
charge
1
2
14
33
2.121867
charge
2
4
9
25
4.051575
charge
3
2
15
31
2.131569
charge
4
4
10
21
4.061079
The section below describes this process in further detail.
Step 1 - One Charge
For bookings that have only one charge, that charge is assigned as the top charge. The steps
below are applied to bookings that have more than one charge.
Step 2 - Charge Class
The dataset Vera received from the CJCC includes a “charge class” variable that classifies each
charge as a felony, misdemeanor, failure to appear, or other/unknown.
105
Each charge is
assigned a subscore based on charge class, where felony level charges receive the highest charge
class subscore, followed by misdemeanors. Failures to appear are assigned a charge class
subscore of zero.
106
The dataset included 7,773 charges (representing 19.2 percent of all charges in the dataset) for
which the charge class was unknown. The majority of these charges were either administrative
charges (as defined above) or “municipal/county violations,” a category used when officers don’t
know or didn’t list the charge on the booking and that has been used less frequently in more
recent years. In these cases, we assigned a charge class subscore of zero.
107
Of the charges with unknown charge class, 1,039 charges were some sort of criminal or traffic
charge (not a municipal/county violation or administrative charge). The majority of these
charges were considered to be misdemeanor-level based on the charge descriptions, so we
assigned them a charge class subscore equal to misdemeanor.
108
108
12 of these charges may actually be felonies based on our own reading of the statutes, but as we don’t
have enough information in the dataset to know for sure whether these were erroneously misclassified, we
conservatively classified them as misdemeanors.
107
Ibid.
106
See step 5 below on the treatment of failures to appear and other administrative charges.
105
We identified 268 charges where the charge class was potentially misclassified based on our reading of
the statute code and sentencing guides. In these cases, rather than overwriting the existing data, we
assumed the existing data was correct–our justification being that there may be other circumstances
relating to the booking that were not visible in the data and contributed to the given charge class.
61
The charge class field alone was generally insufficient for determining the most serious charge
on a booking, as many bookings have multiple charges with the same charge class. Vera
supplemented the existing charge class information in the dataset with additional information
produced by the Kansas Sentencing Commission (KSC) to determine the most serious charge on
bookings with multiple charges.
Step 3 - Charge Severity
The KSC, which was established in 1989, established determinate sentencing in Kansas based on
sentencing grids. The KSC publishes a desk reference manual, as well as two sentencing grids -
one for non-drug charges and one for drug charges.
109
Presumptive sentences are determined
based on the severity level of the current charge as well as a person’s criminal history. The KSC
also publishes files with the detailed severity classification for every felony and misdemeanor
charge in the Kansas criminal code–as well as for anticipatory versions of each charge (attempt,
conspiracy, and solicitation). These files are available for download via the Kansas Sentencing
Commission website.
110
Using these files as a guide, Vera assigned a severity to most of the charges in the Douglas
County dataset that was more detailed than the charge class provided in the original dataset (for
example, specifying that a charge is a “level 5 person felony” rather than just “felony”).
111
Each
charge is then assigned a subscore based on the charge severity ranking, where off-grid person
felony charges receive the highest subscore, and level u not scored misdemeanors receive the
lowest subscore (see directly below for a list of the severity levels used).
The additional consideration of charge severity allows for the ability to more accurately assign a
top charge in cases where multiple different felonies, or multiple different misdemeanors, are
present on the same booking. Note: Vera only identified charge severity for approximately 85
percent of total charges. Another 13 percent of charges represented municipal/county violations
of unknown severity and administrative charges. The remaining 2 percent of charges consisted
of low-level charges, such as liquor violations for minors and traffic-related misdemeanors. The
following severity levels were used, ranked in order of decreasing seriousness
112
:
● off-grid person felony
● level 1 person felony
● level 2 person felony
112
Note that some severity rankings were given the same charge severity score–for example, nongrid
nonperson felonies and level 4 person felonies. See the relevant footnotes for more information.
111
In some cases, the charge class listed on a charge in the data differed from the severity level in the KSC
data file. In these cases, the charge class given in the data was taken as the primary source of “truth,” the
assumption being that the person entering the data may have had other information, such as details about
a person’s criminal history, that would influence the charge class but that is not otherwise reflected in the
dataset.
110
See files labeled “felony listings” and “misdemeanor listings” at the following: Kansas Sentencing
Commission, Reports: 2011 Criminal Code Recodification, (Topeka, KS, 2011).
109
See Kansas Sentencing Commission, Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Desk Reference Manual 2021,
(Topeka, KS, 2021). See also Kansas Sentencing Commission, Sentencing Range: Drug Offenses and
Sentencing Range: Non-Drug Offenses (Topeka, KS, 2022).
62
● nongrid person felony
113
; level 3 person felony
● level nongrid nonperson felony; level 4 person felony
● level 5 person felony
● level 6 person felony
● level 7 person felony
● level 8 person felony
● level 9 person felony
● level 10 person felony; not scored person felony
114
● level 1 drug felony
115
; level 3 nonperson felony; level a person misdemeanor
● level 2 drug felony; level 4 nonperson felony; level b person misdemeanor
● level 3 drug felony; level 5 nonperson felony; level c person misdemeanor
● level 4 drug felony; level 6 nonperson felony
● level 5 drug felony; level 7 nonperson felony
● level 8 nonperson felony
● level 9 nonperson felony
● level 10 nonperson felony
● level a nonperson misdemeanor
● level b nonperson misdemeanor
● level b not scored misdemeanor; level b scored / select misdemeanor
116
● level c nonperson misdemeanor; level c not scored misdemeanor; level c scored / select
misdemeanor
● level u not scored misdemeanor
117
117
See Kansas Sentencing Commission, Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Desk Reference Manual 2021,
(Topeka, KS, 2021), 11. These refer to “Unclassified misdemeanors,” which are punishable as specified by
law, but treated as level c misdemeanors if no such penalty is provided.
116
“Select" refers to specific weapons violations. In the dataset, these were limited to a single charge:
possession of a firearm by a person addicted to and using a controlled substance, see Kansas Sentencing
Commission, Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Desk Reference Manual 2021, (Topeka, KS, 2021), 19; and
KS Stat § 21-6301(a)(10) (2021). Based on the statute, these are typically less severe than level b person
misdemeanor charges and not as severe as nonperson misdemeanor charges.
115
Comparing the severity of drug- and non-drug charges on the same booking poses a particular
challenge since these use different sentencing grids. Vera compared the min and max imprisonment
across the drug- and non-drug grids in order to determine a relative order of severity that, while
imperfect, would sufficiently allow our algorithm to discern which charge is most severe for bookings
containing both drug- and non-drug charges.
114
See Kansas Sentencing Commission, Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Desk Reference Manual 2021,
(Topeka, KS, 2021), 4; "all unclassified felonies will be scored as level 10 nonperson crimes."
113
See Kansas Sentencing Commission, Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Desk Reference Manual 2021,
(Topeka, KS, 2021), 7; nongrid crimes are not subject to the sentencing grid, and instead contain specific
penalties and provisions within their respective statutes. Four types of charges are classified as nongrid
charges in Kansas: felony driving under the influence (§8-1567), felony domestic battery (§21-5414
(b)(3)), animal cruelty (§21-6412), and harming or killing certain dogs (§21-6416). Of these, only
domestic battery is considered to be a “person” charge, which is typically treated more severely than a
nonperson charge. Vera compared the sentencing penalties listed in the statute codes for these charges to
the penalties in the relevant sentencing grids to determine which level of grid charge they are most similar
to. According to this method, Vera assigned felony domestic battery charges the same severity score as
level 3 person charges, and the other nonperson non-grid charges the same severity score as level 4
person felonies.
63
Step 4 - Charge Category
The dataset includes a description of each charge along with the relevant statute code, which
Vera used to group charges into high-level categories. Each charge is assigned a subscore based
on the charge category, where “violent” charges receive the highest charge category score, and
charges in the “other” category receive the lowest charge category score. Anticipatory crimes
(conspiracy, solicitation, or attempt) are also included in the categories below. The following
categories were used, ranked in order of seriousness:
● Violent: loosely based on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program definition
of violent crime, which includes charges that involve force or threat of force. Includes the
following types of charges: assault/aggravated assault (including sexual assault and
assault of a law enforcement officer); battery/aggravated battery (including sexual
battery and battery of a law enforcement officer); domestic battery/aggravated domestic
battery; rape; criminal sodomy; aggravated robbery; kidnapping/aggravated kidnapping;
murder in the 1st and 2nd degree. Total: 4,381 charges.
● Sex Charge: refers to charges listed in Chapter 21, Article 55 of the Kansas penal code
(“Sex Offenses”), except those included in the “violent” category above; For example:
indecent liberties with a child; sexual exploitation of a child; indecent solicitation of a
child; unlawful voluntary sexual relations; lewd and lascivious behavior; internet trading
in child pornography. Total: 165 charges.
● Child Abuse: refers to charges listed in Chapter 21, Article 56 of the Kansas penal code
(“Crimes affecting family relationships and children”); For example: endangering a
child/aggravated endangering a child; abuse of a child; abandonment of a child; criminal
nonsupport of a child; contribute to child misconduct. Total: 179 charges.
● Other Person Charge: Includes charges that are classified as “person” crimes in the
Kansas sentencing guidelines (the “person” designation generally refers to crimes that
inflict, or could inflict, harm to another person), but that fall outside of the other
categories listed here. For example, criminal threat, criminal restraint, and stalking
charges. Total: 591 charges.
● Arson: arson and aggravated arson charges. Total: 33 charges.
● Burglary: burglary and aggravated burglary charges. Total: 462 charges.
● Theft: generally includes charges related to theft. For example: theft of property or
services; theft by deception; criminal deprivation of property; criminal use of a financial
card; theft of property lost, mislaid or delivered by mistake. Total: 1,428 charges.
● Forgery: forgery charges. Total: 142 charges.
● Other Property Charge: Includes charges that are classified as “property” crimes in
the Kansas sentencing guidelines (the “nonperson” designation generally refers to crimes
that inflict, or could inflict, damage to property), but that fall outside of the other
categories listed here. Most of these charges are for criminal damage to property. Total:
1,518 charges.
● Drug Manufacture/Delivery: Drug distribution or possession with intent to
distribute charges and drug manufacture charges. Total: 581 charges.
● Driving Under the Influence: all driving under the influence charges, including
enhanced charges and driving under the influence of a drug or combination of drugs
charges (a minority). Total: 3,398 charges.
64
● Drug Possession: Simple drug possession charges, excluding any drug possession
charges that include an intent to sell or distribute (which are included in the category
“drug manufacture/delivery”). Total: 2,344 charges.
● Other Drug Charge: The only charge in this category is violating a drug law via use of
a communication facility (an instrument used for communication). Total: 58 charges.
● Weapons: Primarily charges related to the unlawful possession of a firearm by a person
previously convicted of a felony. Total: 317 charges.
● Driving While Suspended: Driving while license canceled, suspended or revoked.
Also includes habitual violator charges, a class A misdemeanor charge given when a
person is convicted of three or more driving on a suspended license charges. Total: 888
charges.
● Alcohol: Includes liquor-related charges other than driving under the influence.
Primarily consists of transporting open container charges, as well as illegal purchase or
consumption of liquor (such as by a minor), and possessing or using a fake ID in an
alcohol-related charge. Total: 566 charges.
● Trespass: criminal trespass charges. Total: 629 charges.
● Public Administration Charge: Includes charges related to the obstruction of normal
government operations, such as interference with a law enforcement officer, intimidation
of a witness, and violating a protective order. Total: 1,906 charges.
● Public Trust Charge: Only includes 2 bookings with an official misconduct charge.
● Personal Rights Charge: Includes breach of privacy and eavesdropping charges.
Total: 11 charges.
● Public Morals/Decency Charge: Includes charges listed in Chapter 21, Article 64 of
the Kansas penal code (“Crimes against the public morals”), such as cruelty to animals,
promoting obscenity, and promoting the sale of or buying sexual relations. Total: 23
charges.
● Business Charge: Only includes 1 booking with an embezzlement charge.
● Public Peace Charge: Includes charges listed in Chapter 21, Article 62 of the Kansas
penal code (“Crimes against the public peace”). Primarily disorderly conduct charges, as
well as disturbing the peace, giving false alarm, and harassment by telecom service.
Total: 318 charges.
● Traffic Charge: Traffic-related charges other than driving under the influence and
vehicular homicide, which is included in “other person charges.” Total: 1,717 charges.
● Municipal/county violation: A category used by officers when the charge is
unknown. Total: 2,607 charges.
● Other: Includes a range of miscellaneous low-level charges, such as boating and fishing
violations, wildlife and big game permitting violations, and reporting violations. Total:
93 charges.
● Contempt of Court: contempt of court charges, a very small category. Total: 4 charges.
● Parole Violation: violation of parole conditions. See KS Stat § 75-5217 (2021). Total:
235 charges.
● Probation Violation: violation of probation conditions. See KS Stat § 22-3716 (2021).
Total: 2,668 charges.
65
● Bond Failure: Includes only 1 booking with a forfeiture appearance bonds charge. See
KS Stat § 22-2807 (2021).
● Failure to Appear: Missed court appearance. See KS Stat § 21-5915 (2021). Total:
10,263 charges.
● Detainer, Hold or Warrant: Primarily arrest by a law enforcement officer on a
warrant. See KS Stat § 22-2401 (2021). Total: 783 charges.
● Remand: Court-ordered detention without bail. Total: 1497 charges.
Step 5 - Treatment of administrative charges
Vera identified a number of violations and other non-criminal charges in the data, which we
refer to throughout this document as “administrative charges.” These include failures to appear,
probation and parole violations, arrest warrants, bond failures, and remands. Generally, we
assumed that if one of the charges listed above was accompanied by a new criminal, municipal,
or traffic charge on a booking, the new charge rather than the administrative charge was driving
the arrest.
There is one exception to this general approach. In most cases, administrative charges had a
charge class of either “FTA” or “other/unknown” and were assigned a charge class sub-score of
zero. However, in a subset of cases, these charges had a charge class of misdemeanor or felony.
It is possible that in these cases, the charge class applies to the originating charge to which the
violation or warrant applies. However, it is also possible that the charge class pertains to the
violation itself–for example, it is plausible that a failure to appear could be considered a felony
depending on other circumstances that are not visible on the booking, such as repeat violations.
Vera opted to follow an overall approach that avoids making assumptions and overriding
existing information in the data throughout this analysis. Therefore, in cases where an
administrative charge had a charge class of misdemeanor or felony, they were assigned the
relevant charge class sub-score (not zero).
Practically, this overall approach means that administrative charges are only assigned as the
“top charge” on a booking if they are the only charge listed, or if they are accompanied only by
other administrative charges that are ranked as less severe in the charge hierarchy ranking given
in “Step 4 - Charge Category.”
Step 6 - Combining Scores
Finally, the subscores assigned for charge class, charge category, and charge severity are added
together to arrive at a final combined total score for each charge. This final combined total score
is then used to rank charges for bookings where multiple charges are present and thereby
identify the most serious charge. In some cases, there was a “tie” between several charges on a
booking that were actually multiple counts of the exact same charge. In these cases, we
randomly assigned one of the duplicate charges as the top charge (see “duplicate top charge” in
the table below).
The methods described above allowed Vera to assign a top charge to over 20,000 bookings, or
98.7 percent of bookings in the final dataset. For the remaining bookings with multiple charges,
we relied on deterministic random assignment (with staff review) to assign a top charge, as the
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charges were too similar for our methods to assign a ranking based on charge category, charge
class, and charge severity (for example, the model may be unable to break a “tie” between
several traffic charges of a similar nature, or a possession of a stimulant drug charge along with
a possession of a hallucinogenic drug charge, on a booking). The random assignment method
was used for a total of 122 bookings, or 0.6% of bookings in the dataset. In these cases, careful
staff review of these bookings validated that the randomly assigned top charge was plausible.
In 1.3 percent of cases (269 bookings), Vera staff overrode the top charge that had been assigned
by the model based on judgments made via careful reading of the relevant statute codes. For
example, when listed on the same booking and tied for top charge, a possession of marijuana
charge was assumed to be more severe than a possession of drug paraphernalia charge, driving
while suspended was assumed to be more severe than driving while habitual violator, and
battery on a law enforcement officer was assumed to be more severe than assault on a law
enforcement officer.
Vera staff also overrode the top charge identified by the model in some cases where charges have
a relatively low severity but also have a mandatory arrest provision. Vera identified several
charges that require mandatory arrest in Kansas statute:
● Driving under the influence and fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer (KS Stat §
8-2104 (2021))
● Domestic violence related charges (KS Stat § 22-2307 (2021))
● Stalking (KS Stat § 22-2310 (2021))
Sometimes, these mandatory arrest charges had levels of severity similar to other charges in the
data that do not have a mandatory arrest provision. For example, misdemeanor DUI charges in
many cases had the same severity level as misdemeanor drug possession charges (commonly
level a or b nonperson misdemeanor). Similarly, misdemeanor domestic battery charges had a
similar (or lower) severity level as criminal restraint, violation of a protective order, simple
battery, and endangering a child charges. In these cases, Vera opted to override the weighted
sum model’s charge assignment to ensure that, in cases where a mandatory arrest charge is tied
for top charge with a non-mandatory-arrest charge of similar severity, the mandatory arrest
charge would prevail as the top charge.
The table below provides a summary of bookings based on which method of assigning top
charge was the primary deciding factor.
Bookings by Top Charge Assignment Reason
Assignment Reason
Bookings (#)
Bookings (%)
One charge
11,751
56.5
Charge severity
2,813
13.5
Charge class
2,411
11.6
Duplicate top charge
2,344
11.3
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Charge category
1,084
5.2
Staff override
269
1.3
Random
122
0.6
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