The chief justice of Maine’s Judicial Branch announced a new initiative Tuesday to reduce the number of people awaiting trial who are held in jail yet do not pose a flight risk or a danger to the public. In her annual State of the Judiciary speech in Augusta, Chief Justice Leigh Saufley outlined the goals of the Task Force on Pretrial Judicial Reform to find less-costly and more-effective means than incarceration to handle defendants who owe fines, whose charges do not merit a jail sentence or who are too poor to post bail. “Put bluntly, without better up-front assessments, pretrial detention may make less-dangerous people more dangerous, and we may be missing the need to detain people who currently present a serious threat of violence,” Saufley said in her address in the House chambers of the State House. Saufley said the initiative has received bipartisan support from the leadership of the House and Senate.

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