Salt Lake City - Prototype Evaluation of Des Moines Replication (From First National Conference on Criminal Justice Evaluation - Selected Papers, P 205-221, 1981, Joel H Garner and Victoria Jaycox, ed. - See NCJ-82918)

• NCJ Number: 82922
• Author(s): W M Rhodes; S T Seitz
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 17 pages
• Grant Number(s): 77-NI-99-0020
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Justice
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Publication Type: Program Description (Model)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Available on microfiche as NCJ-82918

Annotation

The replication of the Des Moines, Ill. project, an exemplary project offering four alternatives to formal criminal justice processing, is evaluated for Salt Lake City, Utah.

Abstract

The Des Moines project offered the following alternatives to formal criminal justice processing: release on own recognizance (ROR), pretrial supervised release (SR), probation, and residence in a residential center which offers work and educational release. As an exemplary project of the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, the project had a measurable and marked level of effectiveness and showed a likelihood of replicability. The effort to replicate the Des Moines project in Salt Lake City was evaluated in the general areas of implementation and operation. Specific attention was given to the project's community impact, organizational impact, client impact, system impact, and costs and benefits. The program was successfully introduced, although with significant opposition from the police and bail bondsmen. During its first year of operation, the project gained some support among the disadvantaged neighborhoods of the city, and it introduced both formal and informal changes to the criminal justice system. The impact of SR was particularly impressive, and the delivery of services after adjudication was noteworthy. The project also helped to introduce a number of changes in pretrial release procedures, with ROR impacting heavily on bail release and SR impacting on many who might otherwise have remained in jail. Further, the project's impact on both failure-to-appear rates and recidivism shows some promise. Also, the programs have returned cost benefits to the county in cutting jail monetary costs. Tabular data are provided.