A court system just (fair) pretrial bail system would includ The 10 percent fee is not returned to the person, and bail agents often also require the person (or their friends and family) to sign over collateral to cover the full bail amount. Young Black men are about 50% more likely to be detained pretrial than white . Bail has been problematic since the beginning. A judge setting bail usually takes mere minutes to issue a decision. How much evidence must the government show before someone is put in jail awaiting further process? What theyve found: Even when bail money is paid by the Fund rather than the client or their family, 96 percent of people still make their court dates. In the Courts resource section, you identified the reason for having bail, the pros and cons of the current bail system, and its impact on diverse populations. Predicting crime is notoriously difficult, and highly divisive. But while these statutes attempted to curb the use of money bail, they did not get rid of it, as judges sometimes still assigned money bail that people could not afford to pay. The disparity and discrimination I saw based on race and socioeconomic status outraged me and fueled my desire to dedicate the rest of my life to changing that, she said. America has struggled with the fairness of pretrial detention since the earliest days of the republic, when the protection against excessive bail was written into the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. The United States Constitution says a person is considered innocent until theyre proven guilty so that means more than 450,000 innocent people are currently in jail, simply because theyre too poor not to be there. Prosecutors usually do not contest those decisions. In the past few years, the topic has gone from being relatively low-profile to a major area of reform. ): A previous version of this article said that researchers had refuted a ProPublica investigation that found a Wisconsin assessment tool treated black defendants more harshly than whites. Now theres not a penalty. Philanthropic organizations are funding projects in more than three-dozen states to eliminate bail and adopt algorithm-based risk-assessment tools. Hundreds of thousands of legally innocent people languish in jails on any given day simply because they cant afford bail. Its been touted as a victory for bail reform, but in a rush to rethink a broken system, Steinberg warns that California has replaced it with something worse. Gina Clayton-Johnson, the executive director and founder, said that the legislation completely undermines the purpose for which black and brown women, formerly incarcerated, currently incarcerated, and low-income communities have been rallying around the cry for bail reform.. Thats very different from the likelihood of offending., There are dozens of risk assessment tools in use today, developed by universities, governments, private companies and nonprofit agencies. Discussion Three - I believe there is many changes that need - Studocu What would a just (fair) pretrial bail system include (or exclude). But he wasnt able to get a copy until nearly four months later, when a judge cut his bail to $30,000 and relatives co-signed a bondsmans loan, he said. That bail agent agrees to pay the full bail amount if the person fails to appear at a court hearing. The PSA measures probabilitiesno risk assessment can predict human behavior with 100 percent accuracy. Sometimes we forget that.. But its time to do something bold, says Steinberg. If I had say in how we could make the bail system fair, I would include other options as in rehabs, classes that could . Defense attorneys, meanwhile, warn that the new system could give rise to a new type of injustice: prosecutors using detention motions as cudgels to obtain guilty pleas. COMPAS is used not only for sentencing, but also in pretrial cases, and was the subject of a 2016 ProPublica investigationthat found it treated black defendants more harshly than whites. Even with the recent tweaks, results can seem inconsistent. He got arrested on a second gun charge, which also was dismissed. Civil rights organizations have challenged bail-based systems in a dozen local jurisdictions, arguing that they violate constitutional protections of equal treatment and due process. The end result: while African-Americans and Latinos together represent 30 percent of the US population, they comprise 50 percent of those in pretrial detention. Take a position: What would a just (fair) pretrial bail system include (or exclude). The bail system, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, is meant to ensure that all defendants, presumed innocent before trial, get a shot at freedom and return to court. With bail all but eliminated, about a third of all defendants have been subject to detention requests since New Jersey adopted its new pretrial justice system on Jan. 1. Judges use uniform bail schedules keyed only to the crime charged to determine conditions of pretrial release. Steinberg believes there are better options to ensure people return to court than making them pay or holding them indefinitely. Approaching court from a place of freedom leads to incredibly positive results. They argue that the system imposes an enormous and unfair burden on people and their families, especially low-income people of color. Led by judges, the current, third generation of bail reform can succeed where earlier generations have failed. But it left him deeper in debt. The roadmap is there: due process, the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence and equal justice under the law, she says. But Willis worked part-time for a liquor distributor and didnt have the money.