Recently, I was made aware of a disturbing lack of formal records regarding the Commonwealth’s pretrial detainee population. Although pretrial detainees—those jailed awaiting judicial proceedings—comprise about one-third of our total incarcerated population, official data for this group is alarmingly scarce.

On both a personal and public level, pretrial detention is hugely expensive. Being jailed while awaiting trial —whether for a few days, weeks, months, or years—can radically change someone’s life for the worse. Pretrial detention can lead to the loss of an individual’s job or home, and detainees often suffer from strained or lost relationships with loved ones because of their incarceration. Furthermore, data suggests that the cost of jailing a single pretrial detainee for one year surpasses the state’s per capita income, with total annual pretrial detention costs approaching $1 billion.
 
Given the enormous personal and public costs of pretrial detention, I believe we have a responsibility to, at a minimum, understand the pretrial detention system. Right now, there are too many unanswered questions. How long are pretrial detainees usually held? What sorts of charges are they held on? What is the proportion of cash bail detainees to remanded detainees? What is the demography of the pretrial detention population? To answer these questions and provide us with the necessary information to help improve the pretrial detention system, I plan to introduce a resolution directing the Joint State Government Commission to conduct a study and issue a report on the status of the pretrial detention practices and pretrial detainee populations in the Commonwealth.
 
I invite you to join me in this effort to shed light on a critical, yet understudied, aspect of our justice system.