Jail reform plan adds bail screening

Process tries to identify absconders, addresses legal concerns over rights

Loetha McGruder was driving through Jacinto City on May 19 when she was pulled over by a police officer for traveling about 10 miles an hour over the posted 40-mph speed limit.

Instead of getting a ticket, the young pregnant mother of two found herself locked up in the Harris County Jail for five days on a misdemeanor charge — failing to present proper ID to the officer — simply because she couldn’t afford the bail.

McGruder is the latest plaintiff added to a federal class-action lawsuit alleging that Harris County’s bail hearings routinely violate the constitutional rights of people like her.

On Tuesday, Harris County officials took a step toward attempting to address the issue by announcing a new screening process to help judges determine which suspects awaiting trial can be freed without bail.

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys have been monitoring conditions in Harris County Jail since 2008. In part because of federal pressure, county officials have been working on reforms.

Earlier this year, they announced they had obtained a grant to create a diversion court, revamp

pretrial reviews and attempt to urge judges to increase release options for nonviolent offenders. But advocates like state Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston have said the county’s plans so far have left the flawed bond hearings in place — opening the door for the federal civil rights challenge that he supports.

Proponents of personal recognizance bonds have been stymied in the past by a reluctance on the part of Harris County judges to let suspects out of jail without bail. The conventional wisdom has been that suspects who do not have a financial stake in returning to court will abscond.

On Tuesday, though, county officials touted a new diagnostic tool as a way to move past a decadesold culture that has required every defendant in Houston to put up money or collateral to ensure they would return to court to resolve their cases.

“Obviously, dangerous people need to stay locked up,” state District Judge Susan Brown said at a news conference. “For others, the most effective and efficient course of action may be to release them before trial — with conditions such as electronic monitoring or supervision within their community.”

Lending their support Tuesday were District Attorney Devon Anderson, Chief Public Defender Alex Bunin, county Court-at-Law Judge Margaret Harris and County Commissioner Gene Locke.

What is still not clear is exactly when the new system will be in place and how many Harris County judges will use it.

“No longer will poverty or race or other factors be driving an assessment, insidiously and invisibly,” Locke said. “Now we have a race-neutral assessment that is also class-neutral that will allow defendants to be judged fairly on whether or not they should stay in jail.”

Help from foundations

Tuesday’s announcement was made by a county committee that has long worked toward reform, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. Earlier this year, the committee spearheaded an effort to diagnose and solve problems in the system with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

The diagnostic test announced Tuesday was developed by the Houston-based Laura and John Arnold Foundation. It was described as a neutral-based data tool that would assist judges in gauging the risk that a defendant poses to the community.

Foundation representatives were on hand to explain that defendants do not have to be interviewed and given a subjective assessment. Instead, information about them that is readily available in court documents will be weighed by an algorithm to put each person on a continuum of risk. That assessment will be provided to judges who determine whether a defendant can be released without bail.

The nine factors that are considered include age, prior convictions — including misdemeanors, felonies and information about whether the offenses were violent — and whether they appeared for court in other cases. The assessment does not consider race, gender, past drug use, national origin or income.

Matt Alsdorf, vice president of criminal justice at the Arnold Foundation, said the diagnostic tool was developed using more than 1.5 million cases across the country.

“Our research team figured out the factors that are most predictive of defendants’ likelihood of missing court or being re-arrested, and in particular being re-arrested for a violent crime,” he said. “There’s actually a fairly limited set of factors that are highly predictive of those outcomes.”

The tool, which backers said has seen success in cities like Chicago and in the state of Kentucky, is being provided with training to the county for free.

Alsdorf said the assessment will provide judges with two risk scores: one on whether defendants will return to court and another on whether they will commit another offense.

With that information, a judge can decide if a suspect should be freed without bail, offered a bail outlined in the county’s posted bond schedule or held without bail.

Screening suspects to figure out, statistically, who can be released on a personal recognizance bond, sometimes called “free bail,” is expected to lower jail populations, which represent a major county expense.

But officials said it may take weeks or months to train personnel and launch the new system, which serves suspects who are presumed innocent and awaiting trial.

Added to federal suit

That new tool was not in place in the case of the 22-year-old McGruder.

Court records show that a Harris County hearing officer did not indicate on a form why he set her bail at $5,000 — the maximum amount Harris County designates for misdemeanors. McGruder had no criminal history and two young children; the elder one has Down syndrome.

And he never asked McGruder if she could afford to pay bail — though under both federal and state laws magistrates are required to consider individual defendants’ cases individually — including their ability to post bail.

She was added to a case filed last Thursday by a Washington, D.C. group called Equal Justice Under Law, which has been challenging what it calls money bail practices in federal court cases filed across the United States.

Maranda ODonnell, another young mother recently arrested and jailed after failing to present proper ID at a traffic stop, and Robert Ryan Ford, a Houston man jailed after being charged with shoplifting about $100 in cosmetics, are the other named defendants.

The lawsuit names Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman, who oversees the jail, and the five county hearing officers that generally review such cases and set bail.

On any given day, more than 70 percent of those jailed in Harris County are pretrial defendants who have been accused but not yet convicted of a crime, though typically only about 500 at any one time are jailed for minor misdemeanor offenses like petty theft or trespassing.

An investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that 55 pretrial detainees died in Harris County custody from 2009-2015, including offenders jailed for misdemeanor crimes like trespassing.

Last month, another man detained because he could not post bail after allegedly stealing a guitar — a misdemeanor — was allegedly beaten to death by two inmates jailed on felony charges.