Outsourcing Justice: The Role of Nonprofit Caseworkers in Pretrial Release Programs

Do pretrial release programs, initiated and now operated by a range of nonprofit organizations to redress the inequalities of the bail system, affect the administration of justice? Specifically, do they lessen the barriers to justice often faced by poor and minority defendants? Ursula Castellano s ethnographic study of four pretrial release programs reveals the often unintended consequences of incorporating social service nonprofits in the criminal court process.

Castellano explores the intimate workings of pretrial release programs to show how contract caseworkers now play a critical role at nearly every stage of the criminal justice process and also how well-intentioned nonprofits can end up compromising the traditional adversarial legal process in the name of treatment, sometimes in ways that are detrimental for defendants. In the process, she raises new questions about the increasing involvement of nonprofits in the operation of government.