Press Releases
05/22/2016
Data Release: Daily Statistics of Pretrial Inmates Accused of Misdemeanors, 5/23/16
(HARTFORD, CT) - Today, the Office of Governor Dannel P. Malloy released May 23, 2016 numbers for those accused of misdemeanor crimes who are currently in jail awaiting trial. Often, many of those pre-trial detainees are in prison because they cannot come up with even a few hundred dollars in bail.
With each day spent in jail awaiting a court date, their ability to succeed outside of the criminal justice system declines, the likelihood they will commit a crime in the future increases, and the cost to the state rises. The Office of Fiscal Analysis estimates that the state spends $168 per day to incarcerate an individual inmate, and studies have shown that compared to low-risk defendants held for no more than 24 hours, those held for eight to 14 days were 56 percent more likely to be rearrested before trial and 51 percent more likely to recidivate after sentence completion.
Today - May 23, 2016 - these statistics include:
- Estimated current pre-trial prisoners with a controlling offense that is a misdemeanor: 427
- Estimated additional pre-trial prisoners who have charges where the underlying offense could be a misdemeanor: 664
- Estimated number of inmates accused of misdemeanors who would not be in jail today if Second Chance 2.0 were the law: 347
- Estimated cost to the state to jail all low-risk, misdemeanor pretrial inmates today: $58,296
- Estimated total cost to the state that would be saved had Second Chance 2.0 been implemented on May 16: $466,200
Governor Malloy's Second Chance 2.0 initiative will implement a smarter approach to bail bonds by prohibiting a judge from setting money bail for anyone charged with only a misdemeanor, except where the judge determines that the accused poses an immediate threat to the health or wellbeing of another person, or the accused is charged with failure to appear.
The Governor's Second Chance 2.0 initiative is in line with national trends, led by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, governors, policy experts and pundits nationwide who know that our historic commitment to permanent punishment and mass incarceration has failed our country. If we are to truly be about corrections, and if we are to truly work towards ensuring that those housed in our prisons never return, then we need to be a Second Chance society that invests in permanent improvement and reformation instead of permanent punishment.
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