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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:34 pm
Time: 8:34 pm
Results for bail reform
7 results foundAuthor: Roth, Lenny Title: Bail Law: Developments, Debate and Statistics Summary: This report updates a 2002 Briefing Paper on bail law and practice in New South Wales. It reviews recent changes to bail laws and outlines certain criticism of these laws. It also looks at reports that have discussed bail laws in relation to young people. Statistical trends in bail outcomes and the number of remand prisoners are also examined. The last section discusses a 2007 review of bail laws in Victoria. Details: Sydney: NSW Parlimentary Library, Research Service, 2010. 29p. Source: Internet Resource; Briefing Paper 5/2010 Year: 2010 Country: Australia URL: Shelf Number: 118761 Keywords: Bail (Australia)Bail Reform |
Author: R.A. Malatest & Associates Ltd. Title: Evaluation of the Bail Reform Pilot Project: Peace Region and Surrey. Final Evaluation Report Summary: In the fall of 2006, the Provincial Court of British Columbia proposed a number of justice system reforms in an effort to address time delays in the criminal justice system. One of these reforms concerned the bail process, which included changes to bail determination and redefined roles for judicial officers. The Bail Reform Project is jointly sponsored by the Provincial Court and the Ministry of Attorney General, and led by the Criminal Justice Reform Secretariat (CJRS). An important component of the Bail Reform Project was a comprehensive evaluation of the program design, delivery and impacts. R.A. Malatest & Associates Ltd. was commissioned to complete the Evaluation of the Bail Reform Project. This report contains the key findings from this evaluation. Details: Victoria, BC: R.A. Malatest & Associates, Ltd., 2010. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 17, 2011 at: http://www.criminaljusticereform.gov.bc.ca/en/justice_reform_projects/bail_reform/docs/brp_evaluation.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Canada URL: http://www.criminaljusticereform.gov.bc.ca/en/justice_reform_projects/bail_reform/docs/brp_evaluation.pdf Shelf Number: 122769 Keywords: Bail (Canada)Bail ReformCriminal Justice ReformPretrial Release |
Author: New Jersey. Joint Committee on Criminal Justice Title: Report of the Joint Committee on Criminal Justice Summary: The Supreme Court today released the report of the Joint Committee on Criminal Justice. The report calls for significant changes in the way bail is administered and for the enactment of a speedy trial law. The committee, established in June 2013 by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, includes judges, prosecutors, public defenders, private counsel, court administrators, and staff from the Legislature and the governor's office. The committee was chaired by the chief justice and developed 27 recommendations to improve New Jersey's criminal justice system. The committee confronted some very difficult problems relating to the current bail system and delays in bringing criminal cases to trial,- said Chief Justice Rabner. It is telling that nearly all of the committee's recommendations - which include far-reaching proposals-have the unanimous support of judges, prosecutors, and defense counsel. The report's Executive Summary (pages 1 to 7) highlights the key issues and reasoning behind the committee's recommendations. A complete Table of Recommendations follows the summary (pages 8 to 10). Supervised pretrial release - New Jersey's current system of pretrial release is largely dependent upon a defendant's financial resources. Defendants who are unable to post bail are incarcerated before trial, which can have significant consequences. Poor and minority defendants are more likely to be affected. - The New Jersey Constitution guarantees all defendants the right to bail. Judges have no authority to detain even the most violent and dangerous defendants if they can afford to post the amount of bail set. - The current resource-based system presents problems at both ends of the system: some people are held on less serious crimes, with little risk of flight, only because they cannot pay relatively minor amounts of bail; others who pose a significant threat to the community and a substantial risk of flight must be released if they can afford to post bail. - The committee recommends a statutory change from the present "resource-based" system to a "risk-based" system. Under a risk-based approach, judges rely on objective factors to assess the level of risk an individual defendant poses and then impose appropriate conditions of pretrial release. - Pretrial service officers are needed to monitor compliance with nonmonetary conditions of release and supervise defendants who are released pretrial. Preventive Detention - For certain defendants, no combination of release conditions can reasonably ensure either the safety of the community or their appearance in court. A system of preventive detention would permit judges to consider those questions and decide whether to detain or release a defendant pretrial. - The recommendations for a risk-based system of bail and pretrial detention, Recommendations 1 through 9, are interdependent and should not be considered individually. The recommendations call for both constitutional and statutory amendments. Speedy Trial - The New Jersey and the U.S. Constitutions provide the right to a speedy trial. Under New Jersey law, there are no specific timeframes to determine when that right has been violated. - Defendants sometimes wait years between arrest and trial. Particularly for defendants who are incarcerated pretrial, those delays can cause serious, practical problems and affect how their cases proceed. - Incarcerated defendants are more likely to receive less attractive plea offers, to plead guilty if they have already served a significant amount of time in jail, and to receive longer sentences. - The committee recommends that the Legislature adopt a speedy trial act that sets forth specific timeframes in which defendants must be indicted and brought to trial. Recommendations 10 through 15 provide detailed proposals for incarcerated defendants and defendants who are released. Details: Trenton, NJ: Joint Committee on Criminal Justice, 2014. 120p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 11, 2014 at: http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/pressrel/2014/FinalReport_3_20_2014.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/pressrel/2014/FinalReport_3_20_2014.pdf Shelf Number: 132975 Keywords: Bail ReformCriminal Justice ReformCriminal Justice SystemPretrial Release (New Jersey)Risk AssessmentSpeedy Trial |
Author: Schnacke, Timothy R. Title: "Model" Bail Laws: Re-Drawing the Line Between Pretrial Release and Detention Summary: This paper is designed to help persons craft and justify language articulating who should be released and who should be eligible for detention in a purposeful in-or-out pretrial system through a study of the history of bail, the fundamental legal principles, the pretrial research, and the national standards on pretrial release and detention. It does so, in Part I, by providing the answers to a series of questions that every jurisdiction should be asking before embarking on the task of re-drawing the line between pretrial release and detention. These questions, based on the fundamentals of bail, range from elementary (i.e., "What is bail?") to somewhat complicated (i.e., "How has America traditionally defined 'flight' and how did it struggle with both unintentional and intentional detention for noncapital defendants?") to very practical (i.e., "Can we use the results of actuarial pretrial risk assessment instruments when determining our detention eligibility net?"). In Part II, the paper begins to answer the question, "If we change, to what do we change?" It then introduces three analyses that should be used to assess any proposed model for re-drawing the line between release and detention. In Part III, the paper proposes a "model" process - this author's attempt at purposefully re-drawing the line between release and detention - based on the history, the law, the pretrial research, and the national standards on release and detention, and then, in Part IV, the paper holds the proposed model up to the three analyses. In Part V, the paper operationalizes the concepts from the proposed model into sample templates designed to illustrate how a jurisdiction might phrase certain crucial elements contained in the model. And finally, once this re-drawing of the line between release and detention is done, Part VI of the paper articulates notions that should be a part of any state bail legal scheme in order to make the model provision work. The proposed model can be accepted or rejected by American jurisdictions. Nevertheless, any different model should be subjected to either the same or a more rigorous justification process as is provided in this paper. This paper is likely useful to all persons seeking answers to questions surrounding pretrial justice today. But it should be especially useful to those persons who are taking pen to paper to re-write their laws to determine whom to release and whom to potentially detain pretrial - essentially, to redraw the line between purposeful release and detention. Details: Golden, CO: Center for Legal and Evidence-Based Practices, 2017. 206p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 22, 2017 at: http://www.clebp.org/images/04-18-2017_Model_Bail_Laws_CLEPB_.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: http://www.clebp.org/images/04-18-2017_Model_Bail_Laws_CLEPB_.pdf Shelf Number: 145149 Keywords: BailBail ReformPretrial DetentionRisk Assessment |
Author: Amatya, Pranita Title: Bail Reform in California Summary: On December 5, 2016, Assemblymember Rob Bonta, partnering with California State Senator Bob Hertzberg, introduced the California Money Bail Reform Act of 2017, which aims to reform the current commercial surety bail system. Our project will assist our client in evaluating policy alternatives to the commercial surety bail system. In California, defendants who are assigned bail may contract with a bail bonds agency and pay a ten percent nonrefundable fee to be released from jail custody. This system is referred to as commercial surety bail. Because this system uses a financial condition in order to release defendants from jail, a majority of defendants incarcerated pretrial are incarcerated only because they cannot afford bail. According to the Executive Director of Equal Justice Under Law, Phil Telfeyan, "The problem we see with money bail is that it puts a price tag on freedom. Those who are rich get to pay their way out and those who aren't get to languish in jail." This system, which prioritizes a financial condition over a defendant's potential risk to be rearrested or to fail to appear at court, does not ensure public safety. Beginning in the 1960s, a nationwide bail reform trend began took root, resulting in many states either abolishing or reforming this system. In an attempt to investigate how bail reform efforts would impact the state of California, we conducted policy analysis to compare the commercial surety bail system in California to an alternative system. The alternative system we compare to commercial surety bail involves several important elements. The first element is risk assessment tools, which are predictive algorithms that assess the risk of a defendant failing to appear for a court date and of being rearrested. The second is non-bail release methods, which can include release on one's own recognizance, supervised release, and unsecured bonds. We conducted this analysis in two stages. First, we compared the screening process used in commercial surety bail to the screening process used with non-bail release. Under the commercial surety bail system, judges use bail schedules to screen defendants and assign bail amounts. Under non-bail release, judges use risk assessment tools to screen defendants and inform their release decisions. We analyzed how the bail schedule compares to risk assessment tools on two criteria: predictive accuracy and race neutrality. We found that risk assessment tools scored higher on both criteria. Based on this analysis, we recommend the adoption of a risk assessment tool to inform judicial decision-making. The second stage of our analysis compares the commercial surety bail release method to non-bail release methods based on five criteria: effectiveness, economic bias, fiscal impact, social cost, and political feasibility. We employed a variety of methods in our analysis. We operationalized predictive accuracy, race neutrality, economic bias, and effectiveness by undertaking an intensive literature review. We used high-level cost calculations and estimations to analyze fiscal impact and social cost. Finally, we conducted interviews to operationalize political feasibility. We found that non-bail release methods scored higher than commercial surety bail on four out of the five criteria (all except for political feasibility). Therefore, based on this analysis, we recommend that non-bail release replaces the commercial surety bail system Details: Los Angeles: UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, 2017. 68p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 1, 2017 at: https://university.pretrial.org/HigherLogic/System/DownloadDocumentFile.ashx?DocumentFileKey=835f283a-e9fc-9c56-28bb-073a9bcb1dbf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://university.pretrial.org/HigherLogic/System/DownloadDocumentFile.ashx?DocumentFileKey=835f283a-e9fc-9c56-28bb-073a9bcb1dbf Shelf Number: 146497 Keywords: BailBail ReformPretrial DetentionPretrial JusticePretrial ReleaseRisk Assessment |
Author: Victoria State Government Title: Expert Panel on Terrorism and Violent Extremism Prevention and Response Powers. Report 1 Summary: The Victorian Government will introduce a suite of far reaching new laws to protect Victorians from terror attacks as part of the biggest overhaul of counter-terror laws since they were first introduced. Earlier this year, the Government commissioned a root and branch review - led by former Chief Commissioner of Police Ken Lay and former Supreme Court of Appeal Justice, the Honourable David Harper - of the laws currently available to prevent, monitor and respond to acts of terror. The first report from the Panel contains 16 recommendations covering the use of force, investigative and preventative detention, presumptions against bail and parole, special police powers during declared events and the protection of criminal intelligence. The Government has accepted in-principle all recommendations, with the Panel due to deliver its second report in the coming weeks. As part of the sweeping reforms, Victoria Police's powers to use lethal force when responding to life threatening situations will be clarified. The recommended new measures also include: Changes to the preventative detention order framework to give Victoria Police new powers to question a person in relation to a terrorist act, double the period of interim detention from 2 days to 4 days, and remove the need for police to seek a court order before the period of interim detention starts Ensuring Protective Services Officers are equipped to work alongside police officers to keep the community safe in the event of a terrorist incident Amending parole laws to include a presumption against parole for offenders with links to terrorism Amending Victoria's bail laws to include a presumption against bail for accused persons with links to terrorism The Panel also made recommendations relating to information sharing between Victoria and the Commonwealth, including between members of the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team and security cleared Corrections Victoria staff. Details: Melbourne: Department of Premier and Cabinet, 2017. 86p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 5, 2017 at: http://www.vic.gov.au/system/user_files/Documents/Expert%20Panel%20on%20Terrorism%20report.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Australia URL: http://www.vic.gov.au/system/user_files/Documents/Expert%20Panel%20on%20Terrorism%20report.pdf Shelf Number: 147592 Keywords: Bail ReformCounter-terrorism Homeland Security Terrorism |
Author: Rahman, Insha Title: Against the Odds: Experimenting with Alternative Forms of Bail in New York City's Criminal Courts Summary: Statistics show that money bail is unaffordable and out of reach for many New Yorkers. Even though the median bail amount on felony cases in New York City is $5,000 0 and even lower - at $1,000, on misdemeanor cases - over 7,000 people are detained pretrial at Rikers Island and other New York City jails on any given day because they cannot make bail. Under New York law, the use of bail doesn't have to be this burdensome. In setting bail, judges have nine forms to choose from, including "alternative" forms such as partially secured or unsecured bonds, that require little to no upfront payment to secure a person's pretrial release. The traditional practice in the courts, however, is to ignore these options and impose only the two most onerous forms of bail to make: cash bail and insurance company bail bond. The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) launched a three-month experiment in New York City arraignment courts to examine what would happen if alternative forms of bail were used more often. In what kinds of cases might judges be willing to set these forms of bail? In what amounts? What impact would these alternatives have on a person's ability to make bail? What other pretrial outcomes might be expected? Drawing from a cohort of 99 cases in which an unsecured or partially secured bond was set, these cases were tracked over a nine- to 12-month period to document bail-making, court appearance, pretrial re-arrest, and final case disposition. Interviews were conducted with judges, defenders, and court staff to better understand the results and develop recommendations for improving the use of bail in New York City. The results were promising. Sixty-eight percent of the cohort made bail, and an additional 5 percent were released on recognizance. The use of alternative forms of bail in the cohort was not limited to low-level offenses or certain types of offenses. Approximately 54 percent of cases had a top charge of a felony, and the cohort - felonies and misdemeanors - spanned the gamut from drug possession, larceny, and robbery, to assault, criminal contempt, and weapons possession. Those released had a combined court appearance rate of 88 percent and a rate of pretrial re-arrest for new felony offenses of 8 percent. When released pretrial, the majority of cases resolved in a disposition less serious than the initial top charge at arraignment, with fully one-third ending in dismissal and another 19 percent ending in a noncriminal conviction. Ninety-nine cases out of the thousands where bail is set is a miniscule number in the larger scheme of New York City's bail system, yet this experiment illustrates the possibility of meaningful culture change. The recommendations in this report offer strategies to increase and ease the use of alternative forms of bail: - stakeholders should be educated about them; - the associated paperwork and procedures to set these forms of bail should be simplified; - they should be set routinely as an option in addition to traditional forms of bail; and - when bail is set, it should be done with an individualized inquiry into a person's ability to pay. Details: New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2017. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 10, 2017 at: https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/against-the-odds-bail-reform-new-york-city-criminal-courts/legacy_downloads/Against_the_Odds_Bail_report_FINAL3.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/against-the-odds-bail-reform-new-york-city-criminal-courts/legacy_downloads/Against_the_Odds_Bail_report_FINAL3.pdf Shelf Number: 147639 Keywords: BailBail ReformCriminal CourtsPretrial DetentionPretrial Justice |