Upper Peninsula, Michigan
The Setting
Michigan's Upper Peninsula is among the most rural regions in the continental United States. Marquette County, with approximately 68,000 residents, is the largest and most populous county in the region and serves as the hub of a growing regional pretrial model under Marquette County Community Corrections. Surrounding counties are significantly smaller: Dickinson County has roughly 26,000 residents and Alger County approximately 7,000. The program currently serves Marquette, Dickinson, and Alger counties, with additional counties in active discussions to join. Two staff members manage pretrial supervision for approximately 160 individuals across all three counties, supplemented by a contracted partner for risk assessments.
The program operates within a community corrections framework funded by the state of Michigan, with assessment costs covered through a contracted arrangement with Justice Point, a 24/7 pretrial services organization.
The Challenge
The fundamental challenge in the Upper Peninsula is geographic and financial. Counties with only a handful of bookings per week cannot justify the cost of a dedicated pretrial position. Before the regional model existed, on-call magistrates making weekend and holiday release decisions had no risk assessment information available. Assessments were completed only Monday through Friday, meaning bond decisions made over the weekend were made without the tools the program had developed. Small county jails lacked a standardized process for connecting defendants to the assessment process, and adding forms and procedures to already-stretched booking staff would be a barrier.
The program also had to solve a core operational problem: a pretrial officer cannot physically travel to multiple jails across a region the size of a small state to conduct in-person interviews before arraignment. A model that required physical presence would never scale.
The Strategy
The solution began with a shared infrastructure advantage that is rare in rural settings: the jails the program has worked with in the Upper Peninsula use the same jail management software, Jail Tracker. That alignment made a regional software integration possible. Working with Justice Point, the program built a custom module within Jail Tracker, and when a defendant is booked into any participating jail, the booking entry automatically triggers a notification to Justice Point with the defendant's basic information. No additional form is required from the booking officer. A laminated instruction card in front of the defendant explains the process and prompts them to call Justice Point directly from booking.
Justice Point conducts the full Praxis risk assessment by phone, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including weekends and holidays. The interview takes approximately 15 to 30 minutes. Justice Point verifies the information, including employment and residence, and calculates the risk score. Within two hours of booking, a completed risk assessment report is sent electronically to the magistrate, the judge, and, where the court permits, the prosecutor and public defender.
“We've built a pretty lean machine that is operating beyond our belief, but it still takes funding. And I know for rural counties and states in general, it's hard to find funding for something like this.”
— Community corrections administrator, Upper Peninsula, Michigan
What Made It Work
The shared jail management platform was the enabling condition. Without Jail Tracker being used consistently across Upper Peninsula counties, the software integration would not have been possible, and the automation that eliminates booking officer burden would not exist. When sharing the model with new counties, the program leads with what booking staff will not have to do, not what they will. The ask is minimal: point the defendant to the card, tell them to call a number, and notify Justice Point if they cannot. That framing has been essential to jail buy-in.
Judicial buy-in is the other non-negotiable. In Dickinson County, where the judge supported the program from the first conversation, utilization exceeded projections and the program has grown steadily. Bench support accelerates adoption across every other stakeholder. Without it, progress stalls regardless of how well the operational model functions.
The cost argument closes the conversation for most jurisdictions. Daily jail lodging costs are a known and visible expense for every county. A single avoided jail stay covers the cost of multiple assessments. For counties where jail population is a persistent fiscal and operational pressure, the case is straightforward: a regional pretrial model pays for itself. Programs exploring funding for this model should also consider state partners and larger entities whose interests align with early intervention. In Michigan, the Department of Corrections Office of Community Corrections funds this model based on the principle that the earliest intervention and proper identification of needs leads to better outcomes for probation supervision and safer communities. A state corrections or community supervision agency may be a less obvious but highly motivated funder precisely because the downstream benefits of pretrial services flow directly into their own population outcomes.
Considerations for Replication
The model is replicable where a shared jail management system exists across counties. Before investing in partnership development or stakeholder engagement, identify whether the jails in the target region use compatible or identical software. That single factor determines whether automation is possible or whether a manual workflow will be required. A manual workflow is not impossible, but it increases booking officer burden and makes the model harder to sustain.
Bench buy-in is the program's single most important variable. A supportive judge creates demand for the program across every other stakeholder. A skeptical judge can limit utilization indefinitely regardless of how well everything else is working. If the bench is not ready, the program is not ready. Return when conditions change.
In the summary brief
Explore the use of regional or centralized service models to make pretrial services viable where a single county cannot sustain them.
The program serves three Upper Peninsula counties with two staff members by partnering with a contracted pretrial services organization available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A custom module in the jail management system automatically notifies the contractor at booking, requiring no additional work from the booking officer, and a completed risk assessment reaches the magistrate and judge within two hours of booking, including nights, weekends, and holidays.
Also under Strategy 3
New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts
Montana Office of the Court Administrator
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.