Bond and Reentry

The purpose of this workgroup is to update, innovate and improve upon procedural justice and recidivism outcomes for individuals from booking to reentry from incarceration. Strategic initiatives include providing pretrial service reports, conducting bond court observations for fairness, growing a wide accessible directory of services, and developing and evidence-based proposal for pretrial service option(s).

Unnecessarily incarcerating defendants awaiting court that are not a safety or flight risk results in significant costs to individuals, families and communities. Research has shown a variety of negative impacts from pretrial detention, such as higher rates of conviction and harsher sentences than those released, who have the benefit of demonstrating their ability to behave responsibly in the community. Detained defendants, especially those that pose lower risk of pretrial failure, may become further destabilized and less capable of being healthy, contributing members of society. They can experience loss of housing and income, separation from children or other family members in need of care, untreated mental health and substance use conditions, and develop further needs that place them at elevated risk of future arrest.

By law, a judge must set bond for defendants within 24 hours of arrest (30 days for certain serious cases and repeat violent offenses). Each arrested person has a right to an individualized decision made by a judge about the terms of their release, as pretrial detention is only to be used when other reasonable safeguards cannot assure court appearance or protect the community from harm. Further, the South Carolina constitution strictly limits the cases in which bond can be denied.

As such, there has been a sustained focus on Centralized Bond Court (CBC) practices since the launch of the CJCC’s efforts. For example, several pretrial outcome studies were completed, public defenders and State representatives (e.g., law enforcement, victim advocates and/or Assistant Solicitors) were made more consistently available to provide representation in bond hearings, and professional pretrial analysts were instituted to provide the Court pretrial service reports (PSR) on a daily basis. Such steps have helped to limit inappropriate uses of jail in Charleston County, and highlighted the need for systemic changes. For example, current law in South Carolina routinely relies on financial or personal recognizance bonds as the basis for pretrial release decisions and supportive services that help defendants make it to court and stay out of trouble are not commonplace. Therefore, the workgroup is advancing three specific initiatives:

INITIATIVE ONE: institute mechanisms to ensure bond hearing are continually fair, just and meaningful

• Instituting consistent mechanisms for monitoring activity in CBC and ensuring bond hearings are continually fair, just and meaningful.

INITIATIVE TWO: proposal for pretrial service option(s)

• Diving deep into legal and programmatic research to develop a proposal for pretrial service option(s) that can help address systemic challenges. And,

INITIATIVE THREE: widely accessible directory of services

• Taking an important initial step toward systematically improving reentry from incarceration into the community by partnering with SC 211 to establish a centralized repository of services available in the community that justice-involved individuals, their loved ones, and personnel working with these individuals can easily access.

The initiatives are designed to help shape ongoing efforts to maximize public safety, liberty and court appearance, and achieve improved reentry outcomes. The initiatives also support continuing efforts to ensure the use of jail in the County stays true to its intended purpose (i.e., primary purpose of jail in South Carolina is to hold defendants awaiting court who pose a public safety or flight risk that cannot be reasonably managed in the community and people serving sentences of ninety days of less).