Pretrial RATs fold into the existing frameworks of the criminal legal systems of each city, county, or state in which they are used.

Depending on location, pretrial RATs may interact with the existing bail systems or largely replace them. RATs often impact the amount of bail set, depending on the risk level assigned to the accused person who is evaluated.

In many places with jail overcrowding, decision-makers turn towards electronic monitoring,1Ava Kofman: Digital Jail: How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants into Debt, ProPublica or e-carceration2MediaJustice: #NoDigitalPrisons: Challenging E-Carceration, as a means of removing people from the physical jail but still keeping a close watch on them. In some places, mid- to high-risk levels from RATs lead to recommendations for electronic monitoring as a condition of supervised pretrial release.

Read the following subsections to learn more about policies, bail, and e-carceration.