Justice Delayed: A tale of two counties. Could Sacramento have the solution for court backlogs statewide?

The way in which Kentucky’s Louisville Metro Police Department handles rape cases has come into question. The department’s low level of cases being brought to trial is because of the extra step police officers take: checking with prosecutors to see if they’ll take the case to court. If prosecutors won’t, the police don’t make arrests. The policy is justified as victim-centered. But experts say this, combined with other problematic practices by the LMPD, can leave survivors feeling as though they aren’t believed and alone with their trauma.

Across the United States, district attorney’s are creating blacklists, or “do not call” lists, of police officers that have allegedly lied, abused their power, or have been corrupted. The purpose is to prevent untrustworthy sources from testifying in court, allowing city prosecutors to build stronger cases. While many police departments and unions have opposed such lists, calling them unfair and subjective, prosecutors and communities have supported their use as a response to police misconduct.

Historically, police interrogations of suspects have been brutal and have involved torture. These strategies have also produced a high rate of false confessions. The HIG method, which encourages conversation in a comfortable environment, has shown to be successful in revealing the truth and incarcerating the convicted with confidence.

In Washington, D.C., defendants appear in court within 24 hours of their arrest and many are freed from jail without having to make bail. The process is efficient, relying on a coordinated system of risk assessment and supervision that saves money and supports defendants’ right to timely due process.

Felons get out of jail owing hundreds or thousands of dollars in court and parole fees, acting as an often insurmountable barrier preventing them from reintegrating into society and staying out of jail. What's worse, these fees often end up costing the state more than they produce. Two columns on a program called the Clapham Set, which erases or reduces debts for felons who take classes and job training.

A class at the Manhattan DA Academy brings together assistant district attorneys and people completing their prison sentences in an effort to facilitate meaningful conversations between them.

To curtail the societal ripple effects of prolonged court closures, Kansas' Sedgwick County courtrooms reopened with precautions just four months after initially shuttering due to COVID-19, and later brought in retired judges to help work through the court's backlog of cases. The Wichita court was able to perform more criminal jury trials at the height of the pandemic than other cities and actually saw homicides decline in 2021 as the nationwide murder rate climbed.

The Tap In Center in St. Louis connects volunteer attorneys with people who have open warrants to work toward recalling them. Since the service launched a little over a year ago, nearly 300 warrants have been recalled.

Since 2018, The Bail Project has turned $41 million in donated money into cash bail to free more than 15,500 people in dozens of cities from pretrial detention. The project grew out of the work of Bronx Defenders, which saw over a decade the people it bailed out nearly all showed up for court dates and most did not get into new trouble while out of jail. Now the Bail Project is expanding with new offices in four Southern states, a reflection of the region's high incarceration rates and racial disparities. In the campaign to end cash bail as a penalty for poverty, bail funds serve as a stopgap.

Alamosa, Colorado has lowered its jail population and the number of felony cases and arrests, and has broken the cycle of repeat offending, by diverting people with drug problems from prosecution into treatment. The local version of a national program called Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) was modeled on one in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which worked best when people in the program maintained a close relationship with their case workers. One of many problems those relationships solved: the high number of missed court dates, which result in arrest warrants.