RESEARCH AND DATA COLLECTION

The El Paso County Criminal Justice Coordination department relies heavily on data and research in the mission to enhance pretrial justice and provide quality criminal justice services. Internal data tracking, research, and evaluation projects serve a valuable purpose by assessing the effectiveness of the CJC and El Paso County pretrial efforts. The CJC strives to measure achievement of its critical outcomes through these primary measures:

• The effective use of empirically driven pretrial risk assessments, including the rates of law-abiding behavior and court appearance when defendants are released from custody during the pretrial period of their case.
• The evaluation of pretrial recidivism and how this relates to the efficient and effective use of the jail.
• The percentage of defendants who remain on release at the conclusion of their pretrial period without a warrant issued due to non-compliance.

The CJC conducts limited research and evaluation internally, but also collaborates with external independent researchers. Current research efforts focus on validating the Pretrial Risk assessment on El Paso defendants and further recidivism studies.