The average cost to house a defendant at the Wake County Detention Center is $70 per day, per defendant (this cost is higher if the defendant has medical or mental health needs). Many defendants that are arrested are unable to post a “secured” (monetary) bond and wait in jail for weeks or months for their case to be disposed. At $70 per day, this costs the taxpayers of Wake County a large amount of money just to house these defendants. Many of these defendants would not be a public safety risk if they were to be released back to the community. The Pretrial Services Program screens selected just-arrested defendants to determine if they could be safely released back to the community. If released into the custody of the Pretrial Services Program, the defendant is required to check in with his/her Case Manager once a week, show up for all court dates and remain arrest free. The defendant may also receive special conditions of release such as “no contact with alleged victim”, “curfew” and/or “obtaining a substance abuse assessment and abiding by the recommendations”. All violations of release conditions are reported to the Court. The Pretrial Services Program is the only program in Wake County that seeks to provide the Court with verified information at the defendant’s first appearance hearing. The Pretrial Services Program and the ReEntry Electronic Monitoring Program are the only two programs in Wake County that monitor pretrial defendants release conditions and report violations to the Court.
In FY 2018 there were 991 defendants released to the Pretrial Services Program. The average length of stay on the Pretrial Program per defendant was 220 days. Again, the cost to house a defendant per day is $70. This comes to a cost avoidance savings of $15,261,400 for the taxpayers of Wake County. The Pretrial Program had a success rate of 91.4% in 2018.