Corrections Community

Do pretrial release agencies perform house checks/home visits on defendants they supervise?  If so what are your policies, and do you have the authority to detain a defendant that is in non-compliance?

At this time our agency does not perform house checks/home visits. We do not have enough staff for field supervision.  We do not have the authority to detain a defendant who is not in compliance. Our policy states that the officer submits a Status Report to the Court.  The prosecutor and the defense attorney receive a copy.  It is then up to the prosecutor to file a Motion to Revoke Release Conditions.

Hello Everyone,

At this time DC PSAs policy is pretty much the same as how Becky describes their policy. 

In Chester County Pa we occasionally do house checks, We do not have the authority to arrest without a Bench Warrant. We usually take the local police department with us as a back up and whatever they see in plain view they take their own action on.

We do perform house checks/home visits on pretrial clients.  We have a Pretrial Compliance Officer who is a certified law enforcement officer.  He is responsible for all field supervision.  If he determines someone is in noncompliance he will report this to the case manager who can have an order for arrest completed in about 30 minutes.  The order for arrest must have a judicial signature.  The one exception to this rule is in the case of domestic violence.  North Carolina law allows law enforcement officers to arrest a defendant on site if he/she is charged with domestic violence.

In Colorado, statute does allow for house checks of pretrial defendants but as far as I know rarely do our pretrial programs perform them due to limited resources and safety. On the latter we do some house checks but only in the presence of a police officer and only for cause, usually to determine actual whereabouts of a defendant and/ or to retrieve a GPS device.

Hi Ken, In Colorado, Statutes allow for Home visits to defendants ordered to Pretrial Supervision as a conditon of bond. The reality is that Larimer County (and I suspect other counties as well) do NOT do utilize home visits as part of their case management tools, both because of volume of cases-staff time and safety concerns. If retrival of a GPS or EHM unit is needed and no family is available to bring that unit in, then law enforcement will go with us or sometimes retreive the unit for us.