Law Commons^™

Progressive Facade: How Bail Reforms Expose The Limitations Of The Progressive Prosecutor Movement, Sarah Gottlieb

Washington and Lee Law Review

Progressive prosecutors have been acclaimed as the new hope for change in the criminal legal system. Advocates and scholars touting progressive prosecution believe that progressive prosecutors will use their power and discretion to address systemic racism and end mass incarceration. Just as this hope has arisen, however, so have concerns that meaningful change cannot be enacted within the criminal system by the very actors whose job it is to incarcerate. This Article highlights these concerns by looking at the bail reforms enacted by four different progressive prosecutors and analyzes the initial promises made, the actions taken to reform and eliminate …

The Future Of Bail Reform In The United States, Mary Gorham

Senior Theses

This thesis examines bail reform, specifically cash bail reform, across several jurisdictions in the United States. The goal of this research is to provide a synthesis of the literature and reform efforts at the state and federal levels. Importantly, this thesis will examine recent modifications to the cash bail systems in four states. in order to get a balanced perspective on the success of these reform efforts. In the pages that follow, there will be a presentation of the literature review and a discussion of the reforms that have been undertaken since 2015. Additionally, this thesis will discuss how the …

Judicial Resistance To New York's 2020 Criminal Legal Reforms, Angelo Petrigh

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have examined judiciaries as organizations with their own culture and considered how this organizational culture can form a significant impediment to the implementation of reforms.²² There is a strong connection between judicial culture and a reform’s ability to accomplish its stated goals. Some go so far as to state that most reforms will fail because of the difficulty in altering judicial culture.²³ These studies sometimes focus on legislators misunderstanding the actual effects of legislation when it was drafted, or on the failure to account for particularities in a law’s implementation by undervaluing the fragmentation, adversarial nature, and …

Does Public Health Start Within Jails? A New Incentive For Reform Of Wisconsin's Bail System, Mahmood N. Abdellatif

Marquette Law Review

Wisconsin’s Milwaukee and Dane Counties are among many jurisdictions in the country employing modern bail reforms, specifically the Public Safety Assessment (PSA). Most of these jurisdictions adopted the PSA before the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, but are increasingly relevant as the virus continues to derail public health measures. Through the intersection of detainees, correctional officers, judicial officials, attorneys, and visitors, millions of Americans filter in and out of correctional facilities on an annual basis. These facilities serve as a microcosm of society and breeding ground for mass infection. The COVID-19 pandemic amplified an existing need …

Freedom Isn’T Free: Why Washington State Needs To Move Beyond A Cash Bail System, Andre Jimenez

Global Honors Theses

Despite the belief that our justice system holds people “innocent until proven guilty,” for those who are unable to pay for their freedom from pretrial detention, they find the opposite to be true. The cash bail system in this country allows people to pay a court-determined fee to be released from jail after arrest while they wait for their trial. But as this paper demonstrates, the cash bail system as it currently stands in Washington State criminalizes poverty and simultaneously exacerbates racial inequities. Under this system, accused individuals who cannot afford bail, as well as their families, face extreme social …

Pretrial Detention And The Value Of Liberty, Megan Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson

All Faculty Scholarship

How dangerous must a person be to justify the state in locking her up for the greater good? The bail reform movement, which aspires to limit pretrial detention to the truly dangerous—and which has looked to algorithmic risk assessments to quantify danger—has brought this question to the fore. Constitutional doctrine authorizes pretrial detention when the government’s interest in safety “outweighs” an individual’s interest in liberty, but it does not specify how to balance these goods. If detaining ten presumptively innocent people for three months is projected to prevent one robbery, is it worth it?

This Article confronts the question of …

Reforming State Bail Reform, Shima Baughman, Lauren Boone, Nathan H. Jackson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

We are waist-deep in the third wave of bail reform. Scholars, policy makers, and the public have realized that the short period of detention before trial creates ripple effects on a defendant’s judicial fate and has lasting impacts on our system of mass incarceration. Over 200 proposed bail bills are pending throughout the states. This is not the first period of bail reform in America—two previous waves of bail reform in the 1960s and 1980s have both ended in increased pretrial detention for defendants. Some of the recent efforts in the third wave of bail reform have also increased detention …

Enhanced Public Defense Improves Pretrial Outcomes And Reduces Racial Disparities, Paul S. Heaton

All Faculty Scholarship

Numerous jurisdictions are working to reform pretrial processes to reduce or eliminate money bail and decrease pretrial detention. Although reforms such as the abandonment of bail schedules or adoption of actuarial risk assessment tools have been widely enacted, the role of defense counsel in the pretrial process has received less attention.

This Article considers an approach to pretrial reform focused on improving the quality of defense counsel. In Philadelphia, a substantial fraction of people facing criminal charges are detained following rapid preliminary hearings where initial release conditions are set by bail magistrates operating with limited information. Beginning in 2017, the …

Decriminalizing Non-Appearance In Washington State: The Problem And Solutions For Washington’S Bail Jumping Statute And Court Nonappearance, Aleksandrea Johnson

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Expansive Reach Of Pretrial Detention, Paul Heaton

All Faculty Scholarship

Today we know much more about the effects of pretrial detention than we did even five years ago. Multiple empirical studies have emerged that shed new light on the far-reaching impacts of bail decisions made at the earliest stages of the criminal adjudication process. The takeaway from this new generation of studies is that pretrial detention has substantial downstream effects on both the operation of the criminal justice system and on defendants themselves, causally increasing the likelihood of a conviction, the severity of the sentence, and, in some jurisdictions, defendants’ likelihood of future contact with the criminal justice system. Detention …

Does Bail Reform Increase Crime? An Empirical Assessment Of The Public Safety Implications Of Bail Reform In Cook County, Illinois, Paul Cassell, Richard Fowles

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Recently bail reform issues have been in the news across the country, as concerns about fair treatment of defendants and possible public safety risks from expanding pretrial release have collided. These issues involve important empirical questions, including whether releasing more defendants before trial leads to additional crimes. An opportunity to investigate this public safety issue has developed in Chicago, our nation’s third largest city. There, the Office of the Chief Judge of the Cook County Courts adopted new bail reform measures in September 2017 and reviewed them empirically in May 2019. Cook County’s Bail Reform Study concluded that the new …

The Future Of Pretrial Detention In A Criminal System Looking For Justice, Gabrielle Costa

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Progressive Prosecution: It’S Here, But Now What?, Hao Quang Nguyen

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Boots And Bail On The Ground: Assessing The Implementation Of Misdemeanor Bail Reforms In Georgia, Andrea Woods, Sandra G. Mayson, Lauren Sudeall, Guthrie Armstrong, Anthony Potts

Scholarly Works

This Article presents a mixed-methods study of misdemeanor bail practice across Georgia in the wake of reform. We observed bail hearings and interviewed system actors in a representative sample of fifty-five counties in order to assess the extent to which pretrial practice conforms to legal standards clarified in Senate Bill 407 and Walker v. Calhoun. We also analyzed jail population data published by county jails and by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. We found that a handful of counties have made promising headway in adhering to law and best practices, but that the majority have some distance to …

Boots And Bail On The Ground: Assessing The Implementation Of Misdemeanor Bail Reforms In Georgia, Sandra Mayson, Andrea Woods, Lauren Sudeall, Guthrie Armstrong, Anthony Potts

Scholarly Works

This Article presents a mixed-methods study of misdemeanor bail practice across Georgia in the wake of reform. We observed bail hearings and interviewed system actors in a representative sample of fifty-five counties in order to assess the extent to which pretrial practice conforms to legal standards clarified in Senate Bill 407 and Walker v. Calhoun. We also analyzed jail population data published by county jails and by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. We found that a handful of counties have made promising headway in adhering to law and best practices, but that the majority have some distance to …

Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mason

AI-DR Collection

Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.

This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …

Incarceration Or E-Carceration: California’S Sb 10 Bail Reform And The Potential Pitfalls For Pretrial Detainees, Ashley Mullen

Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research Papers

California’s bail system not only infringes on individual rights, but also exacerbates a cobweb criminal justice system. The In re Humphrey court framed the issue perfectly when it stated that the problem with the bail system stems “from the enduring unwillingness of our society, including the courts, to correct a deformity in our criminal justice system that close observers have long considered a blight on the system.” California sought to rectify this “deformity” of a wealth-based bail system by passing SB 10 (the California Money Bail Reform Act of 2017).

This Note addresses the arguments that will likely be raised …

Bail Reform And Intimate Partner Violence In Maine, Mac Walton

Maine Law Review

The bail reform movement is leading to pretrial practice changes across the country, largely aimed at reducing pretrial detention rates or uncoupling pretrial detention from money. These reforms often include expanding or formalizing the role of actuarial risk assessment tools in bail determinations. Maine has not enacted bail reforms to expressly reduce pretrial detention, but since 2015, Maine courts have been using a risk assessment tool in bail decisions in intimate partner violence cases. Analysis of risk assessment practices in Kentucky and New Jersey, in comparison with the particular considerations in IPV cases, can inform Maine’s current bail system and …

Honoring Innocent Until Proven Guilty: Switching The Default Rule From Pretrial Detention To Pretrial Release In Texas's Bail System, Stephen Rispoli

Texas A&M Law Review

Texas’s current prison population consists of far more pretrial detainees than convicted criminals. Despite United States and Texas constitutional protections, the default rule in many jurisdictions, including Texas, detains misdemeanor and non-violent felony defendants unless they can post a monetary bond or get a surety to post the bond for them (“bail bond”) to obtain their release. Most pretrial detainees remain detained due not to their alleged dangerousness, but rather because they simply cannot afford to post bail (or get someone to post it for them). As a result, many pretrial detainees find themselves choosing between hamstringing their financial future …

Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson

Scholarly Works

Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.

This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …

Why Do Bail Abolition Advocates Oppose The California Money Bail Reform Act?, Jackie Coffman

SLU Law Journal Online

For years, bail abolition advocates have pushed for a cashless bail system. In this article, Jackie Coffman discusses how California recently passed a bill to do just that – but not without some criticism.

Bail And Mass Incarceration, Samuel Wiseman

Georgia Law Review

It is widely known that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world, and the causes and ramifications of mass incarceration are the subject of intense study. It is also increasingly widely recognized that the high rates of pretrial detention, often linked to the use of money bail, are unjust, expensive, and often counterproductive. But, so far, the links between money bail, pretrial detention, and mass incarceration have been largely unexplored. Our criminal justice system relies primarily on plea bargains to secure convictions at a relatively low cost. And, as shown by recent empirical work, the …

Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson

All Faculty Scholarship

Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impacts. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race; (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines; and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.

This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …

National Criminal Justice Caucus Presentation 09-22-2017_11-11-33-184.Zip, Jennifer Levy-Tatum

Jennifer W. Levy-Tatum

How The Right To Speedy Trial Can Reduce Mass Pretrial Incarceration, Zina Makar

All Faculty Scholarship

Kenny Johnson1 was thirty-two years old when he was released from a Baltimore City jail— almost three years after his arrest in October 2012. Johnson was not serving a sentence, but these three years were spent under pretrial detention. He had been denied bail. Johnson’s case was a rollercoaster of delays and uncertainty, particularly towards the end of his pretrial incarceration. The need for certainty convinced Johnson to plead guilty—he could not stand knowing that his pretrial incarceration could be indefinite and he wanted to be sure he was going home, guilty or not guilty.

Between the time he was …

Mcmanus V. Horn: The Legality Of Setting A Single Form Of Bail, Maureen Wynne

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deadly Dilemmas Ii: Bail And Crime, Larry Laudan, Ronald J. Allen

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This is another in a series of papers examining the interaction between the implications of the deadly dilemma of governing that virtually all governmental action involves unavoidable conflict between equally laudatory goals and the conventional way of thinking about social errors. Typically the pursuit of any particular goal has as its consequence precisely the kind of harm that is desired to be avoided. For example, serious felons are sent to prison in part to protect innocent parties from their future predations, but those same felons often prey upon fellow prisoners, including murder. Moreover, felonies committed in prison only begin the …

Preventive Detention And The Judicial Prediction Of Dangerousness For Juveniles: A Natural Experiment, Jeffery Fagan, Martin Guggenheim

Faculty Scholarship

Since 1970, legislatures have increasingly relied on preventive detention – detention before trial ordered solely to prevent an accused from committing crime during the pretrial period – as an instrument of social control. Prior to this period, detention before trial was usually ordered only to assure an accused's presence at trial or to ensure the integrity of the trial process by preventing an accused from tampering with witnesses. Today, the majority of states and the federal system have changed their laws to allow judges to detain arrestees who pose a risk to society if released during the pretrial period. Half …

A New Approach To Bail Release: The Proposed Federal Criminal Code And Bail Reform, Edward M. Kennedy

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

A New Approach To Bail Release: The Proposed Federal Criminal Code And Bail Reform, Edward M. Kennedy

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.