Learning Sites

About Learning Sites

APPR began working with the first group of Learning Sites in July 2020. Pilot sites include Douglas County, Nebraska; Miami-Dade County, Florida; Williamson County, Texas; Wake County, North Carolina; and the City of Youngstown, Ohio. In 2021, APPR started working with the state of Missouri. The Commonwealth of Virginia joined the Learning Sites project in 2022.

Learning Sites receive up to 24 months of assistance and coaching from a dedicated APPR technical assistance (TA) provider. They also have access to APPR Learning, a comprehensive team-based online workspace that guides them through the process of improving their pretrial system. Learning Sites are also encouraged to interact with peers through the APPR Community, an online forum of people across the country who are working to improve their systems of pretrial justice. 

Learning Sites demonstrate a strong commitment to enhancing the fairness and efficiency of their pretrial process, addressing racial disparities, engaging community, and improving their jurisdiction’s pretrial outcomes.

Accomplishments of Learning Sites

Nearly all the pilot sites have completed the Learning Sites project. They have all:

• developed a sustainable, collaborative team dedicated to improving its pretrial system;
• examined or are starting to examine racial and ethnic disparities and engaged community in the improvement process;
• implemented agreed-upon pretrial improvements and created a process for measuring outcomes and evaluating progress; and
• positioned themselves to continue addressing additional local pretrial improvements.

Specifically, all of the pilot sites: completed a pretrial system map, implemented the Public Safety Assessment, created or expanded their pretrial services organization, developed a pretrial assessment report, and conducted stakeholder and community education. Many of the sites also developed pretrial decision-making tools, improved first appearance hearings, developed jail data dashboards, modified their bond schedules, and identified pretrial performance measures.

APPR is no longer accepting new applications for the Learning Sites initiative. If you are looking for technical assistance from APPR, please review our opportunity to receive targeted assistance.