Accused soon to get pretrial relief in Hays County

HAYS COUNTY — The Hays County Commissioners Court received a status update on staffing, procedural processes and future plans for the Hays County Jail population from the newly appointed Director of Court and Pretrial Services Randy Focken at its July 25 meeting.

As Focken provided updates, he continuously emphasized that the office is using a holistic approach for legal services. According to The Center for Holistic Defense, the technique “combines aggressive legal advocacy with a broader recognition that for most poor people arrested and charged with a crime, the criminal case is not the only issue with which they struggle. The key insight of holistic defense is that to be truly effective advocates for our clients, we as defenders must broaden the scope of our work to include both the collateral consequences of criminal justice involvement as well as the underlying issues, both legal and non-legal, that have played a part in driving our clients into the criminal justice system in the first place.”

After delays in salary studies that prevented the pretrial services department from hiring, it now has eight employees who have spent the past six months analyzing the history and population statuses of the Hays County Jail. As of July 30, 2023, the Hays County Jail Dashboard states that currently 81% of the jail population is awaiting pretrial and the court and pretrial services department has absorbed 1,100 of those cases.

“One of the reasons we asked for the case management system is to allow us to better evaluate and ascertain what are some of the needs that need to be addressed [and] how we can evaluate and determine what services are effective,” said Focken. “Let me state [that] we, presently coming into the operation, had very limited resources available. We are collaborating with others and working closely with the Mental Health Court to establish a process to evaluate — and more importantly — treat individuals that have, whether it’s mental health, substance abuse or co-occurring disorders. We’re also evaluating working with the Coalition for the Homeless to establish housing opportunities for individuals that have no place to live that would also potentially be now housed in custody in the Hays County Jail.”

The next step, after understanding the exact situation that the Hays County court system is experiencing and establishing partnerships, is to create a process to interview inmates and find out their background. Focken said that the department understands that the individual cannot discuss their trial, but they want to understand their life prior to the charge to help with opportunities for housing and employment.

The end goal is to implement a diversion program. A diversion program is a thorough analysis that would allow the individual who has been charged to reenter society while still abiding by the court rules, Focken said. The program would find individuals who pass two important criteria: will appear at court dates and will not be a danger to society. The hope is that there will be better communication with the new case management system that would help reduce the number of individuals missing court dates.

“While the decision is in the hands of the district attorney to decide who could qualify, they have asked for our input and we’re working with them to identify what measures we can take to make sure the individual can move safely through the system and hopefully address some of those underlying factors to give them an option [to complete the program],” explained Focken. “It has taken time, and it will take additional time, to make sure as we move forward, that we are addressing things in the right way, considering — obviously first — public safety, but also looking at public safety long-term to see that we make sure those individuals get the resources they need to have, so they don't come back to the system at all. It's a very complicated process, but I believe we can be very successful in doing it.”

Commissioner Debbie Ingalsbe was in support of the work that has been done, but questioned whether inmates would have better opportunities to speak to their attorneys.

Focken confirmed that they have been working with the technology provider to establish videoconferencing for attorneys and their clients. The Hays County Jail staff has also confirmed that the conferences, both in person and virtually, will be confidential.

“Prior to our arrival, there were no interviews being conducted by staff for pretrial. We're changing that [defect] next month and we've been asked by the magistrates to begin with providing those individuals taken into custody [with] the financial affidavit to complete, so that we can provide that to the magistrate prior to the person’s first appearance in court,” said Focken. “[The magistrate can then] have the opportunity to make a decision whether that person qualifies for appointment of council.”

Commissioner Lon Shell ended the discussion with praise.

“Since I’ve been at the county, the word 'pretrial' has been talked about, so that’s for over a decade and there’s been a lot of work done,” said Shell. “I look at our jail population numbers every day, and I’m sure most of us get the report, it’s actually been holding fairly steady in the mid-500s, which is fairly low compared to the last few years and I probably would've predicted we would be in the 650 to 700 range based upon trends in the past … I believe I’m seeing real work going on to these issues from across departments of this county … I'm very pleased with the work that's been done.”