“There is a common thread”: Shifting court culture through collaborative processes as a core component of pretrial reform

Efforts to make criminal legal systems in the United States more equitable often focus on implementing and evaluating a specific policy change. Despite a proliferation of such efforts in recent years, the overall climate of reform is shaky and lacking strong evidence of promising approaches to sustainable progress. We studied six jurisdictions participating in an initiative to implement a pretrial release assessment (PRA) as a means of reducing pretrial incarceration. Longitudinal qualitative data were collected during 205 meetings and 36 site visits over 55 months. At the end of data collection, half of the jurisdictions had implemented the PRA and half had not. Analyses indicate that independent of PRA implementation, bringing system actors into collaborative conversations shifted court culture by strengthening partnerships, increasing understanding of system operations, and clarifying how data can inform intervention approaches. These findings highlight the beneficial shifts in court culture that may result from a process structured to promote dialogue, learning, and idea generation. This study underscores that focusing on a discrete policy to effect criminal legal system reform may be too narrow a lens and miss the potentially transformative effects of processes that strengthen partnerships, improve communication, and develop a shared commitment to common goals.