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| St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office staff, Judge Joseph Densford, Judge Christy Chesser, Commissioner President Randy Guy and the delegation from Armenia |
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| Pretrial Services Supervisor Kristie Ardire, left, explains how the program works to the Armenian criminal justice officials. |
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| Major Michael Merican shows an inmate common room to the Armenian delegation. |
The Pretrial
Supervision Program is used to prepare court cases for bond hearings and/or
trial which provides an alternative to incarceration, reducing jail
overcrowding with an emphasis on public safety.
The Criminal
Justice Collaboration and Partnership Program, supported by the U.S. State
Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs,
brings small groups of criminal justice sector professionals representing
multiple agencies to the United States for a month. The delegation from Armenia
represented five different agencies to work on the issue of pretrial detention
reform in their home country.
In St.
Mary’s County, the Pretrial Supervision Program is administered in cooperation
between the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office, judges and attorneys.
“I don’t
know about Armenia, but we can’t afford to keep building bigger jails and
prisons in the United States,” Major Merican told the delegation. “It’s not
working. But we can get smarter on how we monitor offenders.”
It costs
$150 a day to keep an inmate in jail, he said, while it costs $34.68 a day for
a person enrolled in Pretrial Services.
There is no
cost to the offender in the program. They get the medical and treatment services
they need, Merican said, while they keep working at their jobs to support their
families while awaiting trial.
“The
community at large is very satisfied with the program. We’ve had no problems
with it,” Merican said.
About 20-25
percent of those incarcerated are eligible for Pretrial Services, based on a
public safety assessment which includes whether that the person will appear for
court.
In 2016, 19
percent of the jail’s inmates participated in Pretrial Services, followed by 18
percent in 2017.
As of Sept.
14, 2018, there were 46 offenders in the Pretrial Services Program.
In 2016, the
compliance rate in the program was 77 percent and so far in 2018 the compliance
rate is also 77 percent.
There are
conditions of release into the Pretrial Services Program, including mandatory
drug screening, meetings with case managers, wearing electronic monitoring
units or house arrest.
St. Mary’s
County Circuit Court Associate Judge David Densford and St. Mary’s County
District Court Administrative Judge Christy Chesser also answered questions
from the Armenian delegation.
St. Mary’s
County Commissioners Randy Guy and Tom Jarboe also attended the tour.
