AALS Hot Topic Program

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Session Type: AALS Hot Topic Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: New York Hilton Midtown

Room: Sutton North

Floor: Second Floor

This panel will offer both a clear picture of the state of bail and pretrial detention in the United States and an overview of a range of promising bail reform proposals and efforts, many of which have only begun to take shape in recent months. The panel will address a number of important pretrial detention trends: (i) the recent national focus on problems with money bail, due in large part to the publicity surrounding Kalief Browder's death in June 2015 after three years of pretrial detention at Rikers Island; (ii) the accompanying political shift in bail reform, including important legislative developments in New York City, New Jersey, and Los Angeles; (iii) the growth of the number and importance of local community bail funds; (iv) the recent rise in successful litigation against money bail, including settlements in four different jurisdictions in the second half of 2015; and (v) the expanded use of actuarial instruments to reduce unnecessary bail, spurred most recently by the Arnold Foundation's June 2015 release of its Public Safety Assessment.

The program will examine the problem of pretrial detention and the need for bail reform from a diverse set of perspectives. While there is general agreement among panelists that in most states judges set money bail too often and in amounts that are frequently higher than necessary, the panelists have different views of whether judges have too much discretion, whether their decisions can be better guided using actuarial instruments (or whether those tools improperly reduce individualized decision-making), and whether other groups in the community might be better situated to make pretrial detention and bail decisions (e.g., bail juries or community bail funds). Although the panelists all share a common goal—much-needed reform of our broken pretrial system—each has advocated and/or pursued different means of accomplishing that goal.