APPR Workshops from NAPSA 2025

This training session aimed to help pretrial services professionals understand the key characteristics contributing to their effectiveness in the criminal legal system. Participants examined how these characteristics influence their working relationships with colleagues, clients, and the court. The training also explored various work and leadership styles, offering participants greater self-awareness of their approaches and insights on improving team cohesion and professional success. Through interactive activities and discussions, participants identified their strengths, tackled challenges, and cultivated positive traits that enhance their credibility and influence.

These workshops offered an overview of criminal legal system interactions for domestic violence/intimate partner violence (DV/IPV)-related cases, including available assessments and supervision. Faculty discussed community-based support for survivors’ well-being. Impacted people shared their insights, and presenters introduced practical, evidence-based ways to support everyone involved in DV/IPV cases. The sessions were designed to help pretrial system stakeholders and their community partners develop effective responses—both pretrial and in the broader criminal legal system—to address and reduce the harm associated with DV/IPV.

This workshop focused on improving pretrial practices in rural communities by addressing unique challenges and exploring innovative solutions. Guided by experienced rural practitioners, participants engaged in collaborative discussions, shared strategies, and learned from real-world examples to strengthen pretrial justice systems tailored to rural settings. Topics included resource limitations, stakeholder collaboration, and implementing effective, evidence-based approaches.

Interagency communication and education are essential for productive, collaborative pretrial system advancements. In this training, participants learned specific tactics and approaches to communicating effectively with judicial officers, prosecutors, public defenders, and other system professionals. Presenters discussed how to identify champions open to ongoing information exchanges to create regular opportunities for internal education. The presentation included input from professionals whose own learning experiences influenced them to become champions for pretrial justice.

This workshop responded to the urgent need to interrupt a 50-year trend of increasing pretrial detention and further incarceration of women, despite them posing little danger to public safety and being the likeliest to have the role of primary caregiver.

The Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP) developed a participatory pretrial model to foster more equitable, just, and family-strengthening pre-conviction decisions for women. This workshop educated participants about the participatory pretrial model, which helps prepare judicial officers, pretrial practitioners, and women facing court decisions to support a more inclusive process. It shared strategies for pretrial services that will result in better-informed decisions, greater autonomy for the people charged, a more holistic approach to pretrial monitoring, and, ultimately, more successful completion rates for people on pretrial release.

This workshop discussed findings from the cross-disciplinary field of decision science, summarized for the pretrial context. It also provided an overview of guidance on making effective, outcome-focused decisions and introduced a “desktop card” for thoughtfully examining decisions. Recognizing that learning is more effective and lasting when it’s fun, presenters guided attendees through a novel exercise designed to emphasize the importance of mindful decision making as a best practice.

Criminal legal systems and their community partners increasingly recognize that most people released pretrial appear for their court hearings and remain law-abiding. Many pretrial services agencies, wisely, have shifted their supervision model to prioritize and focus on supportive services rather than surveillance. However, many pretrial agencies still struggle with providing supportive services in a manner that is consistent with being the least restrictive. This training highlighted how one jurisdiction is using social workers within the public defender’s office to support people with need-based services (rather than ordering conditions). Pretrial services staff (directors, supervisors, and officers) learned how this partnership evolved, the various services offered by the social workers, and how this partnership works effectively to enhance the success of individuals.

County-level efforts to improve pretrial practices can often spur other jurisdictions to follow suit, sometimes leading to state-level reforms. This workshop featured representatives from two states to discuss how local changes are having larger-scale statewide impact. 

This workshop was built on guidance published in the 2024 update to NAPSA’s Pretrial Standards that emphasize the use of people-centered, strength-based language. Presenters provided an overview of multidisciplinary research on the benefits of people-centered, positive language and how it can promote success for pretrial systems, communities, and people involved in criminal legal systems. It’s about more than just being nice; it’s about language as a tool for cooperation and better outcomes.