photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Judge Amy Hanley is pictured at a public reading of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 23, 2024.

A Douglas County judge is on a new statewide committee that will work on implementing alternatives to jail for defendants who are awaiting trial.

Judge Amy Hanley is one of the 15 members of the new Ad Hoc Criminal Pretrial Practices and Procedures Advisory Committee created by the Kansas Supreme Court. The committee includes judges, lawyers, court services workers and members of law enforcement, according to a release from the Kansas Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The new committee will be devising plans to implement recommendations from a previous task force on pretrial practices. Among other things, it is expected to develop educational materials and programs related to pretrial procedures, create statewide pretrial supervision standards and select and pilot an assessment tool for a pretrial supervision program.

“We want to ensure defendants appear in court, but we must operate from a presumption of innocence and liberty, not from a presumption of guilt and preventive detention,” Chief Justice Marla Luckert said in the release.

The previous task force — which also included a Douglas County official, then-District Attorney Charles Branson — was created in 2018 and made its recommendations in 2020. It found that 53% of local jail inmates in Kansas had not yet been convicted of a crime, and that many inmates remain in jail because they cannot pay bail, according to the release.

Some of its recommendations include issuing notices to appear rather than arresting people; connecting people who have mental health or substance abuse issues to needed support; and giving people the opportunity to voluntarily report after missing a court date to avoid arrest.