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A new Web site was, ExpertBail.com, was launched by AIA, so users can search for a bail agent by city, state or zip code everywhere commercial surety bail can be written and obtain valuable information on how the bail process works. Approximately two million defendants are released through commercial bail agents each year.
Access the Web site here.
Use the Crime Report for more information on bail.
Now just two steps away from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk, Chelsea’s Law could transform the state’s approach to sex offenders through a balance of longer sentences, tougher parole conditions and targeted treatment. “We’ve stayed focused on the worst of the worst,” said Brent King, father of the slain teenager whose name on the bill serves as a lasting memorial, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune. The law could spawn a national movement driven by Chelsea’s parents for reforms in other states. (more…)
The Atlantic explores the world of GPS tracking devices for convicts, concluding that they look like an appealing alternative to conventional incarceration, as it becomes ever clearer that, in the U.S. at least, traditional prison has become more or less synonymous with failed prison. By almost any metric, says the magazine, “our practice of locking large numbers of people behind bars has proved at best ineffective and at worst a national disgrace.” (more…)
As pressures build to reduce the “mass incarceration” in the United States, more attention should be paid to “starved probation and parole resources,” contends William Burrell, former New Jersey probation and parole official. Speaking yesterday to an American Probation and Parole Association conference in Washington, D.C., Burrell said that about 70 percent of government spending on corrections and only about 12 percent to probation and parole even though probation and parole agents handle high caseloads. The probation staff in Sacramento County, Ca., is facing a 50 percent cutback. (more…)
Delaware’s Board of Parole is being rocked by internal turmoil, reports the New Castle-Wilmington News Journal. A split on the board got so bad that in late April that four of its five members asked a Superior Court judge to order board Chairman Dwight F. Holden to schedule hearings that the board had requested. That dispute appears to have been settled without a court order, but the troubles within the board run deep, according to the paper. (more…)
In my last post, I raised the following question: How do we address the growing population of incarcerated individuals with mental illness?
One approach gaining popularity around the country is the idea of “specialized caseloads” for parole officers. Practically, what this means is that parolees with mental illness are assigned to parole officers who have received training on how to best manage this population and carry a reduced caseload.
