Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Pretrial Reform topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Candidate Charisse Fano Bardeen stresses relational leadership, warns pretrial tools are not racially blind
Summary
Dr. Charisse Fano Bardeen told Travis County commissioners her career at the Pretrial Justice Institute focused on system-wide pretrial reform and relational change management; she urged close scrutiny of risk-assessment data, saying the underlying data are not racially blind.
Dr. Charisse Fano Bardeen told the Commissioners Court she spent much of her career leading the Pretrial Justice Institute and that transformational change requires relational work and patient, milestone-driven processes. "The bulk of my career was spent running the Pretrial Justice Institute," she said.
Answering a question on bias in tools, Bardeen urged skepticism about algorithmic neutrality. "What I wanted to be successful at was people questioning whether or not the underlying data that is used is somehow racially blind. It is not," she said, describing a process that led her organization to publicly question its prior support for some assessment tools. Bardeen described using pre-mortems, extensive stakeholder engagement and phased milestones to maintain momentum and address political resistance.
On workforce and community engagement she emphasized early, meaningful inclusion of impacted people and embedding evaluation into program design. Commissioners pressed for examples; Bardeen cited national pretrial work, reentry and technical assistance she led and said sustaining programs requires transparent data and clear ties between budget items and strategic plans.
The candidate repeatedly framed change as long-term, iterative work and said success for the IJPA role would include helping the county design diversion and deflection systems that lead more people out of the criminal system. A final hiring decision was deferred to executive session.
