By Michael Hill
Correspondent
Advocates say statistics of the first three months show bail reform is a success at — among other things — decreasing the state’s jail population.
“Preventative detention is something that should be really rarely used because the government is taking your freedom. And so you want to make sure there’s a really good reason for that. And you really are balancing the danger to the community with people’s civil rights,” said Roseanne Scotti, New Jersey director of the Drug Policy Alliance April 18.
On Jan. 1, the state ended deciding a defendant’s release based on whether he or she could pay bail. Instead, it began using an evidence-based risk assessment tool to decide if released whether a defendant will fail to show up for court or likelihood of committing another crime.
State statistics show of the 10,000 pre-trial decisions judges have made, prosecutors asked for detention in more than 20 percent of the cases and judges jailed more than half — nearly 56 percent — of those defendants. Nearly 1,000 defendants were released to some kind of monitoring under the newly created Pretrial Services Program — more than a third at the highest level that includes weekly visits, electronic monitoring and house arrest; more than a third from monthly in-person visits to phone calls and the rest agreeing to come back to court or no conditions.
Eight defendants have been held on bail.
“The transition has been remarkably smooth and for the first time low-risk defendants no longer have to linger in jail for months, in some cases years at a time because they cannot afford to post even modest amounts of bail,” said Judge Glenn Grant, acting director of the Administrative Office of the Courts.
The Drug Policy Alliance says bail reform restores fairness to the criminal justice system.
But, bail reform critics say the state’s not telling the whole picture.
“How many of these defendants that have been let go have failed to appear? How many of these defendants that they’ve let go have and committed new crimes and be arrested for new offenses? How many of these defendants have failed to comply with pre-trial monitoring, which quite frankly really doesn’t exist? They didn’t release anything that shows that this program is a success other than that they’ve emptied the jails,” said attorney Richard Blender.
Other critics have called for making changes to bail reform. Judge Grant urges caution because he says bail reform is still in its embryonic stage. He says refinements to the system are being studied but any changes should be based on objective data.