The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/courts/pretrial-release/page/2/)
Kentucky was one of the first states to use risk assessments to help decide pretrial release decisions. Studies have found that the state’s judges rely on them less and that some racial disparities remain.
Between April and June, 81 percent of jurisdictions increased releases from jail for persons awaiting trial, according to a nationwide survey of pretrial services agencies. The fact that crime rates remained relatively stable suggests that changes made in the era of the coronavirus should become permanent, survey leaders said.
Funds across the U.S. helping people win release from jail have seen an influx in donations as people seek to support the activists protesting the killing of George Floyd.
More than 50 former federal prosecutors are urging an appeals court to cast aside the government’s detention bid for a pair of New York City activist attorneys charged in a Molotov cocktail attack on a marked police car, on a violence-ridden night of protests after the death of George Floyd.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the deep-rooted inequities of pretrial detention, says a University of Alabama law professor.
In the first month after Los Angeles County released many suspects with no need to post bail, 213 people were arrested multiple times, with 23 of them arrested three or more times.
Two charities have bailed out 162 defendants in Chicago charged with serious offenses in the last three years. More than one-fifth of them have been charged with new crimes.
The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the nationwide drive for eliminating money bail and fixing the inequities of pretrial detention. But it’s also strengthening opposition from the bail industry and tough-on-crime advocates,. such as San Diego’s DA, who objected to some jail releases in his city.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislators revised a series of controversial changes to the state’s cash bail system that had frustrated law enforcement since taking effect this year.
Some 3,000 fewer people on average are jailed in Chicago’s Cook County since bail policies were changed, while crime rates have continued falling, a new report finds.