A few years back, when this county defeated for the second time an initiative to create a mega jail, I began to look at the system that is our incarceration system. **How do people end up in jail before they are tried and what are some of the consequences of pretrial incarceration.**
The diagram lower down on this page emerged after many interviews and discussions. There is truth in it.
Our county council employed the Vera Institute of Justice 
to analyze our incarceration system and to create a report with detailed diagrams of our incarceration system. I may share that soon, but the key leverage points in the system are presented here along with the community context which is not included in the VERA Report.
I have highlighted in **green** the parts that relate to normal community life.
Voters, highlighted in **light blue**, have great influence if they choose to use in by electing county council, sheriff, prosecutor, and judges.
County council has weak and indirect influence though **pink** links which are financial and organizational only.
I have highlighted in **red** the parts of the incarceration system. I must admit that I had no real understanding of the parts or the relationships nor did I understand who has the levers of this system in their grip.
Judges, **purple**, have more power to influence the system than they use.
The prosecutor has huge influence on the system. I came to believe that we must elect this person wisely and replace them quickly when they begin to harm the community's future.
This community and many others are aware of the multigenerational psychological, sociological, biological, and economic effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences. In my opinion it is these effects that are the main produce of incarceration--not justice. Retribution (punishment) seldom supports the future of communities.
There are two easy changes that will dramatically decrease the harm from pretrial incarceration. They are abolish the bail system and replace it with electronic home monitoring.
My wish is that everyone in the chain of events from incident to pretrial incarceration would exercise judgement that considers the consequences on the community as a whole as they make their **choices**.
This system is a gauntlet of imperfect people and imperfect processes, compounding their imperfections as it progresses.
Incident Perp Victim=> Accuser and Accused=> 911=> Sheriff and Police=> Prosecutor=> Courts and Judges=> Public Defender
I suspect that the further down the sequence the incriminations proceed the less likely anyone will make choices that change the momentum.
There are also some very perverse financial incentives at play. Money flows into the Sheriff's budget for each person incarcerated. About $40,000 per person from the families. And about $130/day of incarceration from the federal government. Some of these people are incarcerated for nearly a year before their trial, while they are "presumed innocent." Budgets beget committments and therefore are hard to reduce, thus real pressure to feed the system with pretrial incarcerations.
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Areas for productive **Civic Action** to decrease the harm caused by the system in its current state: 1 Abolish Bail System 2 Use Electronic Home Monitoring in place of bail. 3