Jail incarceration is a significant part of the United States’ uniquely high incarceration rates, and the harms of jail incarceration are numerous and significant. Harris County, Texas, with support from the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC)—an initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reduce overincarceration and disparities in jail populations—enacted various case processing changes to reduce the local jail population awaiting trial. This case study explores the use and impact of those strategies.

Why This Matters

High levels of jail incarceration impose substantial costs on jurisdictions, requiring greater resources with potentially limited impact on public safety. Jail incarceration also places a great deal of strain on the people incarcerated, who may be at high risk of being victimized while incarcerated, have lower wages after their release, and experience worse mental health and substance use issues. People in jail pretrial make up a large part of the jail population, and case processing time contributes to pretrial incarceration’s impact.

What We Found

Harris County employed three strategies to reduce case processing time: use of scheduling orders, more efficient evidence gathering, and the introduction of the Responsive Interventions for Change (RIC) docket. Stakeholders in Harris County viewed these strategies as successful but also noted that each came with inherent challenges.

How We Did It

We relied on three primary data sources for this case study: 11 semistructured interviews with Harris County stakeholders, analysis of materials and documentation provided by stakeholders, and analysis of jail population data collected from SJC sites by the Institute for State and Local Governance. Interviews were analyzed using NVivo qualitative analysis software. We used thematic analysis of stakeholders’ responses to identify trends using a codebook developed for this case study.