This story is the second in a two-part series on nonprofit models for delivering pretrial services. Read Part 1.
“We meet our clients in custody to start the intake process and build rapport. Then we walk them back to our office, where we conduct individualized assessments and get to know them. Our staff provide guidance and support as clients figure out how to get their lives back on track.”
Nonprofit pretrial organizations play an essential function in criminal legal systems where they are contracted. Often embedded in day-to-day system operations, these groups achieve their contractual obligations to local jurisdictions while maintaining organizational independence.
The three nonprofit pretrial directors interviewed for this series say operating as a third-party service provider has its benefits and limitations. They believe their external status aids in building trust with clients and strong partnerships with community service providers. As system outsiders, however, they face skeptical stakeholders, limited access to data, and the potential loss of their contracts.
Building Trust
Trust is a key component of procedural justice. When people in the criminal legal system perceive their experiences as procedurally just, their compliance and cooperation are improved, and community safety is enhanced.
Many pretrial services agencies, nonprofit and public sector, strive to build trusting relationships at the earliest opportunity. This process starts by clearly explaining the organization’s role, what they can and cannot do for the client, and the client’s responsibilities.
“The trust relationship starts the minute we walk into the interview room with the client,” says Elizabeth Simoni, executive director of Maine Pretrial Services. “We sit with them and ask them to consider talking to us. We say, ‘this is who we are, we’re a private nonprofit, and you don’t have to—in fact, you shouldn’t—admit anything.’ Then we ask them to consider informed consent so we can create a release plan and share what they tell us in court if asked. Giving them that choice sets the foundation for trust.”
Nick Sayner, CEO of JusticePoint, added, “Ideally, we interview someone within an hour or two of the arrest. We’re probably the first non-law enforcement entity to talk to them, often even before a defense attorney. That fifteen-minute interaction is the most important part of building rapport and trust. If we fail at that moment, they’re not going to trust our case management, our pretrial assessment, or our ability to make solid referrals for them. They’re not going to want to answer our phone or text messages.”
The organizations take care to present themselves to clients and their families as service providers.
“We don’t use the term ‘officer.’ Our client-facing staff are ‘case managers,’ ‘liaisons,’ or ‘release specialists,’” says Mauroff of SF Pretrial.
Simoni agrees. “We’re case managers. We may use another descriptor for specialized roles, like domestic violence case manager or mental health case manager, but by and large, everyone’s a case manager.”
“The trust between a client and their case manager extends to the client’s family, friends, and community,” says Mauroff. “If the client trusts us, the people close to them will, too. They can tell us what’s going on with the client if they miss court or we lose contact with them. They know we want to help.”
The trust between a client and their case manager extends to the client’s family, friends, and community.
Connecting People to Community Services
Assessing the needs of each client and connecting them to treatment, housing, or other services is a key part of each nonprofit pretrial service agency’s role. Creating and maintaining relationships with other service providers enables them to make those connections quickly and with confidence.
“We have amazing relationships with other nonprofit service providers. We understand each other 100 percent,” says Simoni at Maine Pretrial. “We have a statewide membership organization that meets regularly, and we often serve on each other’s boards, work on problems together, and hold each other accountable.
“Those relationships help with client trust, too. Some of our female clients were reluctant to speak with us, often because their male partners threatened them to not talk to anyone. We work with a local domestic violence resource center, and now when they speak with incarcerated women, they tell them little about Maine Pretrial and say, ‘it’s up to you to talk to them or not, but we trust them.’ That has helped a lot.”
Our agency engages in service delivery based on the directives of the courts. But often when courts refer someone to us, they look to us as experts to translate those directives into individual service plans.
Mauroff: “Our intensive supervision program relies on community partners, having bed space available, and access to residential treatment for expedient and immediate placement. The program is successful because our staff has developed deep relationships with community partners. We work well together because we speak the same language and share the same mission.”
Limitations and Solutions
Each organization described a high level of trust and respect from its partners in law enforcement and courts. But there are also limitations for nonprofits working outside of the public sector.
For Simoni, consistent access to information has been a struggle.
“We haven’t always been recognized as a criminal justice agency in Maine—though by statute, we have qualified as one for a number of years—so we haven’t had consistent access to criminal history records. Those records are critical for doing a comprehensive assessment.
“Just this month, our status was clarified, and an MOU was approved by Maine’s Chief Justice allowing us access to that information, which we’re super grateful for. It has been a long fight to get it, and we’re pleased the state has recognized the important role we play in this way.”
For Mauroff, SF Pretrial’s role during the pretrial phase is limited by what happens when a case is disposed and clients leave their care.
“We have tremendous success with clients while they’re on our caseloads,” he says. “But when they fall off our caseloads, it’s difficult to maintain all the supports we worked so hard to connect them with.
“In partnership with community partners, we are piloting a pretrial aftercare framework to ease clients’ transition from our case management services to day-to-day life. The goal is to set up a parallel track of individualized support so their progress is not interrupted. We also just became San Francisco’s first housing access point dedicated to justice-involved people.”
Sayner remarked that some of the biggest “cons” for nonprofit pretrial organizations include the “painful” request for proposal (RFP) cycle they must go through to keep their contracts with local jurisdictions and the conflict between the values and priorities of mission-driven organizations and those of system stakeholders.
“You get nonprofits like mine that want to push policy change and reform, which is good if you believe in those sorts of best practices, but it’s a pain for politicians who have a lot of competing priorities,” Sayner says.
“Where we get the biggest eye roll is when we push for best practices like universal screening with a validated tool for rural areas that have limited resources. They may only book six people a week and have initial appearance courts twice a week. So that’s a hard sell, but I’m hopeful that we can address those issues, possibly with lessons learned from the pandemic.”