The pretrial process rarely provides anyone—especially Black and Brown women and gender-diverse people—the opportunity to share their stories and unique circumstances or to advocate for their needs. The system also does a poor job of explaining the pretrial process to people and acts as if each person experiences the process in the same way.
That’s why the Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP) formulated a model of “participatory pretrial” to address the urgent need for more equitable, just, and family-strengthening decisions for women and gender-diverse people pre-conviction. This model prepares judicial officers, pretrial practitioners, women, and gender-diverse people facing court decisions to support a participatory process, hopefully resulting in more informed decisions, greater autonomy for the people charged, a more holistic approach to pretrial release conditions, and an increase in the rates of successful completion for people on pretrial release.