December 29, 2025
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A recent Penn graduate found that many Pennsylvania counties lack some basic information about pretrial detainees, including how many are being held because of their inability to post bail.
Most of Pennsylvania's roughly 500 magisterial court judges don't have a law degree. Instead, these elected officials rely on an 18-day course in Harrisburg for the requisite training to set bail, handle civil matters and oversee traffic violations.
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There are about 20,000 people in the state who are in jail awaiting trial, and a lot of them are there because they could not post the bail set by these judges.
Leo Solga, who graduated from Penn this month, set out to learn more about this system, but many jurisdictions he reached out to had limited information about their pretrial detainees.
Solga spent two years traveling across the state to interview different magisterial judges, jail wardens and pretrial services directors. In June, he published his findings in Penn Law's Journal of Law & Social Change.
"It's a quick turnaround decision after you get arrested," Solga said. "Magisterial district judges, many of them not lawyers, are deciding after maybe 10 minutes of talking to you. ... Are you going home or are you going to jail?"
These decision can cause people to lose jobs, homes and relationships before they even go to trial, Solga said.
"It's also super expensive," he added. "I estimated that pretrial detention in the commonwealth costs close to a billion dollars [a year]."
Penn graduate Leo Solga researched pretrial detention in Pennsylvania and found a lack of record-keeping across the state.
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Solga, 22, reached out to all 67 counties in Pennsylvania requesting five points of data: How many pretrial detainees are in each county jail? How many are being held due to their inability to post bail? Who was denied bail? How many are being held due to misdemeanor charges? And what's the average number of days pretrial detainees are kept in custody?
Responses were received from every county except Jefferson County, but only 20 were able to answer all five questions. Many requests came back incomplete or were rejected outright.
"I tried to be super clear in my data requests, but a lot of the time they weren't able to provide the really basic stuff," he said. "The pretrial population is complex and constantly moving. Sometimes people in jail go across county lines because counties can't afford their own jails. There are people in the sheriff's office holding cell ... or juveniles who can't be tracked or held with adults."
Pennsylvania requires minimal documentation about people who are held in jail before starting their trial, and Solga hopes that his research can inspire legislation that regulates how counties track and publish their detainees.
During his internship in the spring with state Rep. Mary Jo Daley, a House resolution was introduced to conduct a study and issue a report on the status of pretrial detention practices and populations across the state.
"I think it would be wonderful if people knew who their magistrate district judge was," he said. "They are often getting selected by a few thousand people. ... But we have to understand how this process works to reduce recidivism and create a healthy, stable and safe society."
