One practice that defines the pretrial period is plea bargaining. Despite the wide use of plea bargaining, little is known about the practice, largely because it happens outside public view and with little documentation. In an effort to uncover plea bargaining practices, ISLG funded two studies from two research partners: the Urban Institute to conduct a mixed-methods study of plea bargaining processes in one SJC site—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Loyola University Chicago and the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) to conduct mixed-methods studies of plea bargaining processes in two SJC sites: Milwaukee County, Wisconsin and St. Louis County, Missouri.

Earlier this year, ISLG launched Measuring Progress, an interactive tool that can help stakeholders and the public track progress achieved by Safety and Justice Challenge sites. ISLG has dug deeper into two of the findings so far relating to the effects of COVID-19 on jail populations and racial and ethnic disparities. These briefs provide additional important context to the trends shown in the tool.