Pretrial Services

Pretrial Services didn't change much - and didn't receive much attention - throughout the Seventies. But in 1983, as the county's shortage of jail space approached crisis levels, Corrections and Rehabilitation hired an ex-Marine, Tim Murray, to head the bureau. Murray, who had been the director of pretrial services in Washington, D.C. and had served as a pretrial-release consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice, came to Miami armed with two weapons that would alter forever the way Dade County viewed its pretrial-release program: 1) a firm grasp of recent changes in the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, requiring judges to consider the option of pretrial-release programs for all defendants regardless of their financial status; and 2) a strong personal belief that the long-held practice of requiring monetary bail for release before trial created an inherent inequality of justice. "This republic has been based on one tenet," says Murray, now the director of Dade's Office of Substance Abuse Control. "It says on the Supreme Court building in Washington, `Equal Justice Under Law.' But there can be no equal justice under a money-bail system unless everyone has an equal amount of money."

With Murray's arrival, Pretrial Services began to grow. In 1985 the program accepted 11,000 felony defendants. By 1988 that figure had jumped to nearly 21,000. In 1990 23,443 people were freed under pretrial release. Today the bureau employs 63 full-time staffers, with an annual budget of $2.5 million in county funds. And somewhere along the way - no one, including Murray or current director Russell Buckhalt, can say exactly where - the function of the program took a radical turn. No longer is the bureau a public-advocacy program for indigent and low-income defendants who would have trouble posting bond. Above all, Pretrial Services is now considered to be a mechanism for easing jail overcrowding - a safety valve for the corrections system.

"Our mandate," confirms Buckhalt, a 22-year veteran of the corrections department who took over Pretrial Services in 1989, "is to assist in the relieving of [jail] overcrowding, and to look at people who can be released on a nonfinancial status."

That reassessment of purpose troubles some early proponents of the initial, need-based mandate. "The program has just gotten too massive," says Judge Petersen. "It's lost its original sense of what it really is supposed to be. Pretrial [release] should exist only for those people who really need it - the indigent and other low-income people."

Under the current system, Pretrial Services officers interview every person arrested on felony charges and taken to the county jail; and at the defendant's bond hearing, typically held only hours after arrest, a bureau worker tells the judge whether the program is willing to accept the defendant. Although no figures are available, bureau director Buckhalt - as well as many bail bondsmen and assistant state attorneys - says that judges normally accept Pretrial Services' recommendations. Once out of jail, the defendant must abide by certain rules. These requirements, determined on an individual basis by bureau workers, typically consist of a weekly "check in" phone call to the Pretrial Services office, occasional counseling sessions, and generally staying out of trouble. Defendants are prohibited to leave the tri-county area (Dade, Broward, and Monroe) without permission.

But Judge Petersen argues that the operation of Pretrial Services entails a dangerous conflict of interest. How can the Corrections Department objectively oversee the jail and the Pretrial Services Bureau - two agencies with seemingly contradictory needs and interests? "If the jail is running the pretrial-release program and if they have an overriding interest in letting people out - which they do because it's horribly overcrowded," says Petersen, "then the program is going to become a vehicle for getting people out of jail rather than a vehicle for objectively determining who should be released without bond and who shouldn't."

Other critics agree. "I'm not a real fan of the program in general," says Abe Laeser, Dade's senior trial assistant state attorney. "I think the primary function [of Pretrial Services] is to be a clearing-house for the jail as opposed to a program that actually cares whether or not this person or that person is going to cause a problem if they are released." The Bail Bondsmen's Association's Gary Whitice says, "Pretrial release is simply used to maintain somewhat of a cap at the jail, and it seems that the main consideration - which is whether or not the guy seems like a good risk of showing up in court again - is not really taken into serious consideration."