Heres a riddle for you. Even with the recent tweaks, results can seem inconsistent. Those findings, however, have been challenged by researcherswho said they found no evidence of racial bias. Predicting crime is notoriously difficult, and highly divisive. Deep-pocketed defendants, meanwhile, face no such challenges. The biggest loser in all of this, by far, is the bail bond industry. If you want a 100 percent guarantee that any individual will not commit a crime while out on release, the only way to do that is to lock everybody up, Grant said. Actuarial algorithms should not play a role in pretrial systems. Prosecutors usually do not contest those decisions. Progressive district attorneys, such as Kim Foxx in Chicago and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, have decided that their offices will not seek bail for a range of charges. The shared goal of reforming bail is to get rid of the wealth-based pretrial system and to do this without a significant increase in crime or failure to appear in court. Bail reinforces the racial disparities of the American criminal justice system. Theres also evidence that this process is incredibly arbitrary. We cant eliminate bias, but we can disrupt the cycle of bias and thats what this tool is intended to do.. (There are a couple of exceptions such as the Arnold Foundations tool, which does give a separate score for chance of arrest for a violent crime.). One such effort is New Jerseys Bail Reform and Speedy Trial Act, which went into effect Jan. 1. The use of money bail is one of the most troubling features of our deeply unequal justice system. The judge has a few different options. Civil rights advocates and public defenders opposed the tweaks, saying they were based on anecdotal cases and would undermine the algorithms objectivity. The states portion is entirely funded by court filing fees, a fluctuating source of revenue that judges fear will turn out to be insufficient. Steinberg believes there are better options to ensure people return to court than making them pay or holding them indefinitely. These suits have led to some major victories, including a 2017 ruling from a federal judge who found that the money bail system in Harris County, Texas, was unconstitutional. Since the founding of the country theres been bail here, McCallen said. A just pretrial bail system would: -Issue bail depending on someone's financial capability. The Prison Policy Initiative projects that 70 percent of those pretrial detainees are charged with non-violent crimes mostly involving drugs or property offenses. The PSA very likely would have given him a low risk score. But this risk is likely not that high. This will ensure fairness between the rich and the poor. McCallen recalled the January morning when bail reform went into effect, sitting in a courtroom and watching people hed bailed out before some of whom he considered flight risks getting released.
