Prince George County, Hopewell, and Surry County, Virginia
The Setting
Riverside Criminal Justice Agency provides pretrial and local probation services across three localities in Virginia: Prince George County (population 43,010), the City of Hopewell (23,033), and Surry County (6,561). The three localities represent a spectrum from rural to small urban. The program operates from a main office with shared satellite access in Hopewell and shared court space in Surry. Two dedicated pretrial officers carry caseloads ranging from 75 to 110 individuals, supported by a pretrial investigator, a program manager, and a senior officer who carries some pretrial cases alongside a probation caseload.
The program joined the Virginia Pretrial Advancement Project in late 2025 and held its PSA implementation kickoff in January 2026. A circuit court chief judge and a commonwealth's attorney are both serving as project champions, a combination that positions the program well for sustainable change, as judicial and prosecutorial alignment at the outset gives the implementation team credibility across both sides of the courtroom.
The Challenge
As Riverside works through its PSA implementation process, the system mapping sessions have created an opportunity to surface a pattern that had been observed: compliance reporting was consuming staff time without producing proportionate value. In rural localities where court may sit only two or three times a month and staff are stretched across three jurisdictions, every hour spent writing reports is an hour not spent on client contact, resource navigation, or the coordination that rural cases require. Officers were writing court reports for clients whose behavior, though imperfect, was not rising to the level of any action the court would actually take.
The result was a cycle that left staff stretched thin. Officers spent significant time generating documentation that did not change outcomes, while clients who most needed attention were competing for the same officer bandwidth. Pretrial supervision was structured more around administrative thoroughness than risk-focused engagement.
The Strategy
The PSA implementation process required convening all stakeholders together for system mapping sessions, including judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, clerks, and pretrial staff, in a region where thin bench depth and stretched schedules mean stakeholders rarely occupy the same room at the same time. Getting everyone together required months of calendar coordination. When the sessions finally happened, they created space for conversations that had been difficult to initiate on their own. During one session, the question of compliance reporting came directly to the table: what information do judges and prosecutors actually need, and what will they realistically act on?
The answer led to a straightforward but significant change that Riverside has begun implementing. The program stopped sending compliance reports. Clients who are compliant receive no court report. Instead, a few days before a scheduled court date, the pretrial officer sends a brief email to the prosecutor noting that the client is compliant. The prosecutor shares that information with the defense attorney. Non-compliant clients receive a report. The distinction is direct: if the program is not at the point of requesting a show cause or capias, there is no report.
The shift is already freeing meaningful time. Officers can redirect attention to clients with genuine compliance concerns, high-risk contacts, and resource navigation. That reclaimed time translates directly to more client contact. The court docket is cleared of reports that no one was taking action on, and the clerk staff see a reduction in paperwork volume.
“The court progress reports were taking away from the time we could be having meaningful client interaction. We needed our stakeholders to understand extensive compliance reporting should not override the delivery of supportive services and root-cause problem solving.”
— Pretrial program director, Riverside Criminal Justice Agency
What Made It Work
The PSA implementation process was the enabling condition. The program director had recognized the compliance reporting problem for years, and the system mapping sessions created a structured venue to surface it with all stakeholders present. The conversation happened among stakeholders who had worked together across the three localities and already had a foundation of mutual trust.
Having both a circuit court chief judge and a commonwealth's attorney engaged in the system mapping conversations meant that the compliance reporting change carried endorsement from the moment it was introduced.
Considerations for Replication
Programs considering this shift should frame it as a resource allocation decision, not a lowering of standards. In rural programs where staff cover multiple localities, drive significant distances, and manage thin court schedules, time spent on reports the court will not act on is time directly subtracted from client contact and supervision quality. The question is not whether to hold clients accountable but whether every minor variation in compliance warrants a formal court report.
System mapping sessions, or any structured process that brings all stakeholders together to examine current practice, are the most effective forum for this kind of change. In rural circuits where the bench is small and schedules are tight, securing that shared time is itself a significant effort, but it is the investment that makes systemic change possible.
In the summary brief
Refocus supervision resources on conduct that threatens public safety.
The agency asked judges and prosecutors what information they needed to make decisions. Those conversations confirmed that routine compliance reports for clients who were meeting their conditions provided the court with information it rarely used while consuming valuable officer time. With that confirmation, and with stakeholders directly involved in defining the solution, the agency stopped sending routine reports for compliant clients while continuing to report all noncompliance to the court immediately, redirecting officer time to supervision activities that more directly influence outcomes.
Also under Strategy 6
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.