Adult Detention Initiative (ADI)

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

The Adult Detention Initiative (ADI), launched by Hennepin County in 2015, is committed to using best practice strategies system-wide to assess who needs to be in detention, to create alternatives for those who don't, and to reduce the length of detention while protecting public safety and remaining cognizant of the impact detention has on economically disadvantaged communities and communities of color. The Adult Detention Initiative’s goal is to work across all criminal justice agencies to foster a just, equitable, efficient, and effective criminal justice system. ADI is led by Chairs of the ADI Leadership Team which is comprise of representatives from the County Attorney’s Office, The Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office, Hennepin County Public Defender’s Office, 4th Judicial District Court, Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitations, local police departments and Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office. This group of executives from the varied departments work on reviewing policy, practices and procedures to ensure best practices are used and write new evidence based practices for implementation. At the direction of the committee chairs, the group discusses business practices to improve client service delivery, reduce unnecessary system impacts, and evaluate disparities and use of objective measures at multiple intercepts. Further, ADI has adopted the Pretrial Population Review Team, comprised of a group of similar representatives from a variety of departments within the line of business of Public Safety to work on issues impacting the overall jail population. Initiatives of the review team include; reviewing and modifying court orders to streamline business practices, changes in court calendaring to expedite hearings, implementation of validated risk assessment tools to expedite release as appropriate, modify pre-sentence investigation services while reducing time to disposition, explore the expansion of pre-trial electric home monitoring, explore teleconferencing for out of county holds and research bail reform.