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Assessing Risk And Cash Bail In Massachusetts, Brittany M. Gammett
Assessing Risk And Cash Bail In Massachusetts, Brittany M. Gammett
Honors Program Theses and Projects
The use of risk assessments to determine the outcome of bail hearings has the potential to eliminate inequality in bail decisions and establish an impartial uniformity for the use of bail in jurisdictions across Massachusetts – but only when the assessments are based on empirical evidence and combined with judicial discretion. In April of 2018, Massachusetts passed a criminal justice reform bill. Under the new reform, a judge must take into account a defendant’s ability to pay bail when a bail amount is set. I measured the success of the bill through an ethnographic study, by sitting in on bail …
Public Perceptions Of Police Interactions With Juveniles, Jillian Orr
Public Perceptions Of Police Interactions With Juveniles, Jillian Orr
Honors Program Theses and Projects
While previous research shows how different people respond differently to situations regarding police use of force on juveniles (Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, etc) this paper delves into what aspect each person has that influences the way they feel the police officer should respond to a juvenile suspect. I surveyed a group of about 300 people and asked them to give their responses to a vignette in which they were the acting police officer. Then, I analyzed the public opinion results through the lens of authoritarianism and compared them to the variables of age, gender, employment, and education.