RESOURCES
Rural Pretrial Case Studies
Practitioners and administrators at 18 local, regional, and statewide pretrial programs describe the strategies they use to strengthen operations, improve coordination with law enforcement and the courts, and promote public safety in rural communities.
Summary Brief
Rural Pretrial Strategies to Strengthen Operations
Eight strategies from the field to promote public safety and strengthen coordination between pretrial programs, law enforcement, and the courts. In interviews, rural pretrial agencies described a consistent set of operational challenges that differ in kind, not just in scale, from those facing urban systems. The brief pairs each challenge with a responsive strategy and illustrates it with examples from the participating programs.
from the summary brief
Eight strategies from the field
Eight strategies rural programs use to meet challenges that urban systems do not face in the same way. Select a program to read its case study.
Strategies 1 to 5
Building the system
Structures, relationships, and evidence that hold a rural pretrial program in place when people and priorities change.
Establish formal governance structures
In small communities, coordination often rests on a few people and unravels when a judge retires or a director leaves. Standing policy teams and written agreements keep it in place.
Educate stakeholders on pretrial functions
Rural partners may know pretrial staff well without knowing what pretrial services do. Programs educate each stakeholder group before asking for operational commitments.
Explore regional or centralized service models
Many rural counties book too few people to justify a dedicated pretrial officer. Regional hubs and state-level units provide the assessment and coverage a single county cannot sustain.
Present data in decision-ready terms
Rural program data often stops at the required report. Programs translate it into the measures judges, sheriffs, and county leaders use to make decisions.
Pilot first, evaluate the data, and, if appropriate, expand
With a small stakeholder pool, one failed initiative can set trust back for years. Programs test new practices as time-limited pilots and expand on the results.
Strategies 6 to 8
Serving defendants
Practices that reach defendants across rural distances and service gaps, from booking to the close of the case.
Refocus supervision on public safety
Blanket compliance tasks consume scarce rural staff time without improving court appearance or public safety. Programs refocus supervision on the conduct that affects both.
Build behavioral health pathways
Treatment in rural communities can mean one provider, a months-long waitlist, or an hour of travel. Programs connect defendants to services at the pretrial stage through embedded clinicians, enrollment at the bond hearing, and peer navigation.
Layer low-cost access solutions
Distance, transportation, and limited connectivity drive missed court dates in rural counties. Programs layer low-cost fixes such as taxi contracts, court kiosks, and check-ins scheduled on court days.
Case studies
Browse by Strategy
Pretrial Contact Cards at Citation
In Union County, Oregon, a simple business card handed to individuals at the time of citation reduced failure-to-appear rates by 57 percent in one year, illustrating how a no-cost, law enforcement-aligned intervention can close access gaps that larger investments cannot.
Pretrial Navigation to Community Services
In Washington County, Vermont, a pretrial program rooted in restorative justice has defined its role as navigation rather than supervision, connecting people to services, filling gaps where community resources do not exist, and treating every interaction as an opportunity.
Taxi Transportation and Justice Station Kiosks
In McKinley County, New Mexico, a pretrial program serving a large rural and tribal population demonstrates how five years of consistent, transparent data reporting can shift a community's understanding of pretrial services and produce some of the strongest compliance outcomes in the state.
Shared Rural Coverage and Sequential Bail Review
In Maine, a statewide nonprofit pretrial organization has built four interlocking rural solutions: a self-organizing staff coverage culture that sustains single-person rural programs, a partner peer resource network that connects clients to services across the state, regional case reviews that amplify learning and continuity across county lines, and a sequential bail review system that ensures no pretrial detainee in any served county goes untracked.
Behavioral Health Conditional Dismissal Program
In Kentucky, a statewide pretrial system deliberately piloted its behavioral health conditional dismissal program in rural counties first, generating stronger community buy-in and new provider infrastructure in communities that needed it most.
Front-End Diversion with Required Peer Support
In Langlade County, Wisconsin, a one-person front-end diversion program demonstrates how peer support, flexible scheduling, and deep community roots can sustain meaningful change in a small, economically distressed rural community.
Court Reports for Noncompliance Only
In Virginia's central region, Riverside Criminal Justice Agency used PSA implementation as the catalyst to end an inefficient compliance reporting practice, redirecting officer time to meaningful client interaction and focusing court attention where it belongs.
Risk-Based Drug Screening Protocol
In Virginia's Blue Ridge region, Blue Ridge Court Services used Public Safety Assessment implementation as the catalyst for a drug screening protocol that shifted officer practice from compliance enforcement to supportive engagement, reducing violations and keeping clients connected long enough to be helped.
Bond Hearing the Morning after Arrest
In Chippewa County, Wisconsin, a pretrial program built on a decade of collaborative infrastructure supports bond hearings before cases enter the state court system, creating an early diversion window, while keeping clients connected through flexible contacts, community relationships, and a monitoring philosophy that treats people as participants rather than subjects of supervision.
Rural Release Assistance Staffing and Peer Comparison Data
In Oregon, a statewide commitment to rural-specific staffing minimums, information-first implementation in resistant communities, and peer comparison data has built pretrial infrastructure in rural counties that previously had none.
Pilot-First Policy and Public Outcome Reporting
In St. Croix County, Wisconsin, a newly established civilian pretrial department built stakeholder alignment through weekly workgroups, a pilot-first approach to policy change, and cross-agency collaboration that extended a court navigator model into family court.
Centralized Public Safety Assessment Processing
In Montana, the Office of the Court Administrator centralized the PSA function at the state level to carry the assessment burden for rural counties, providing more consistent coverage and more hours of processing capacity than any single county position could sustain. Since 2018, the unit has completed more than 40,000 assessments, freeing local staff to focus on case management and monitoring.
Centralized Pretrial Support Units for Rural Courts
In New Mexico, the Administrative Office of the Courts built a statewide pretrial infrastructure from scratch in six years, reaching 30 of 33 counties to date by centralizing several functions that benefit small rural programs and rolling out jurisdiction by jurisdiction to ensure that systems did not go live before the foundation was ready.
Regional Remote Risk Assessment at Booking
In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a regional community corrections program made pretrial services financially viable for counties too small to sustain a full-time position by building a remote risk assessment model using a shared jail management system, a 24/7 contracted partner, and a software integration that eliminated nearly all burden on booking staff.
Stakeholder Education Sessions and Arraignment Presence
In Minnehaha County, South Dakota, a sheriff-based pretrial program used targeted educational sessions and consistent physical presence at arraignments to build stakeholder understanding and achieve a 61 percent reduction in failure-to-appear rates.
In-House Voluntary Therapeutic Services
In Cass County, Indiana, a locally funded pretrial program built an in-house therapeutic services team, demonstrating how voluntary behavioral health services at the pretrial stage produce outcomes that court-ordered treatment cannot replicate.
Nonprofit Pretrial Model with Tiered Advisory Boards
In Delta County, Colorado, a practitioner rebuilding pretrial services through a nonprofit model shows how deliberate planning, strategic county sequencing, and voluntary behavioral health integration can create a durable program in a stakeholder-diverse rural district.
Interagency Pretrial Policy Team
In Grant County, Indiana, a data-driven policy team and a 16-month university research partnership have formalized stakeholder engagement and shifted officer practice in ways that data and relationships alone could not accomplish.
This project was supported by Grant No. 15PBJA-22-GK-03661-JAGT awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.