Hamilton County, Tennessee
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A pretrial detainee can wait 4-14 days between magistrate’s bond setting to initial appearance in General Session’s Court. Four days is the typical wait, however it could be up to 14 days pursuant to law. 1
After initial court appearance, a detainee or defendant can wait 8-10 weeks for a Grand Jury decision
or up to 1-2 years on average for jury trial or disposition of the case(s). 2
Pre-COVID-19 averages.
County taxpayers pay $63,000 daily or about $23 million annually on average to house pretrial inmates, people who have not been convicted of any crime and presumed innocent.3
This number excludes federal inmates awaiting trial in our jails.
The projected cost of the initial Silverdale expansion is $20-30 million.4
"The move marks the first step in phasing out the downtown Chattanooga jail . . . including the possibility of moving some court systems along with the inmates to the Silverdale area in order to reduce transportation costs."5
Each month, 500 pretrial defendants are appointed by judges to the Public Defender’s Office on average, because they were found indigent.
Sometimes indigent defendants make bond by third parties.
About 50% of these appointees are charged with misdemeanor crimes.6
There were on average 760 pretrial detainees housed in Hamilton County Jail and Silverdale Detention Facility each month in 2020. The number decreased significantly with this spring's COVID-19 release, but by November and December, there were almost 1000 pretrial individuals. Of those, about 385 were charged only with misdemeanors.
This number excludes federal inmates awaiting trial in our jails.7
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In 2015, Hamilton County had 28th highest pretrial incarceration rate of the 258 counties in the U.S. with populations over 100,000.8