By Andrea Woods and Portia Allen-Kyle

Every year, millions of people are arrested, required to pay money bail they cannot afford, separated from their families and loved ones, or absent from their jobs--subjected to long periods of incarceration based on the mere accusation of a crime. This all occurs while people are presumed innocent under the law. Black and brown people, their loved ones, and those without the economic resources to thrive suffer the worst harms. The money bail system is in dire need of an overhaul.

New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2019. 15p.

By the Criminal Justice Policy Program, Harvard Law School

Bail reform presents a historic challenge – and also an opportunity. Bail is historically a tool meant to allow courts to minimize the intrusion on a defendant’s liberty while helping to assure appearance at trial. It is one mechanism available to administer the pretrial process. Yet in courtrooms around the country, judges use the blunt instrument of secured money bail to ensure that certain defendants are detained prior to their trial. Money bail prevents many indigent defendants from leaving jail while their cases are pending. In many jurisdictions, this has led to an indefensible state of affairs: too many people jailed unnecessarily, with their economic status often defining pretrial outcomes. Money bail is often imposed arbitrarily and can result in unjustified inequalities. When pretrial detention depends on whether someone can afford to pay a cash bond, two otherwise similar pretrial defendants will face vastly different outcomes based merely on their wealth…. All of this builds on sustained attention from experts and advocacy groups who have long called for fundamental reform of cash bail.3 As policymakers across the political spectrum seek to end the era of mass incarceration,4 reforming pretrial administration has emerged as a critical way to slow down the flow of people into the criminal justice system. This primer on bail reform seeks to guide policymakers and advocates in identifying reforms and tailoring those reforms to their jurisdiction. In this introductory section, it outlines the basic legal architecture of pretrial decision-making, including constitutional principles that structure how bail may operate. Section II describes some of the critical safeguards that should be in place in jurisdictions that maintain a role for money bail. Where money bail is part of a jurisdiction’s pretrial system, it must be incorporated into a framework that seeks to minimize pretrial detention, ensures that people are not detained because they are too poor to afford a cash bond amount, allows for individualized pretrial determinations, and effectively regulates the commercial bail bond industry.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School, 2016. 40p.

By the National Task Force on Fines, Fees, and Bail Practices

The purpose of this Guide is to provide state court leaders with detailed information on state bail reform efforts. This Guide presents case studies of six states’ recent experiences with bail and pretrial reform efforts: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, and Texas. These six states were selected to present a geographic and politically diverse sample, as well as a variety of approaches to reform. Key members involved in the reform efforts in each state were interviewed, including chief justices, appellate court justices, trial court judges, state court administrators, administrative offices of the courts staff, state legislators, state attorneys general, and executive-branch criminal-justice experts, among others

Fairfax, VA: The Task Force, 2020.78p.

By the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

This report examines current approaches to reforming the pre-trial and bail systems in the U.S. criminal justice system. The report reveals that between 1970 and 2015, there was a 433% increase in the number of individuals who have been detained pre-trial, and pre-trial detainees represent a larger proportion of the total incarcerated population.

Washington, DC: The Commission, 2022. 281p.

By Krystal Rodriguez

On April 1, 2019, New York State passed sweeping criminal justice reform legislation, including discovery reform, requiring prosecutors to disclose their evidence to the defense earlier in case proceedings. The discovery reforms went into effect January 1, 2020, but were amended in April 2020, with an effective date 30 days later. In April 2022, New York State included further amendments to the discovery statute, along with other criminal justice reforms, in the state budget. This document, originally published in 2019 and updated in 2020, incorporates those most recent changes.

The impact of discovery reform—regardless of amendments—rests on how well it is implemented and enforced. Compared to the pre-reform era, accelerated discovery timelines remain in force, even after the April 2022 amendments. If implemented properly, the current law has the potential to shrink case processing times, resulting in shorter jail stays for people held in pretrial detention. By facilitating a defendant’s ability to prepare a defense, the reform may also result in fewer prison or jail sentences and more just outcomes.

New York: The Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2022. 15p.

By Olive Lu, Erica Bond, and Preeti Chauhan

On April 1, 2019, New York State passed extensive legislative reforms (“2020 Criminal Justice Reforms”) aimed at transforming the criminal legal system and its impact on New Yorkers. Amongst other changes, the reforms (which came into effect on January 1, 2020) now require police in New York State to issue desk appearance tickets (commonly referred to as “DATs” or “universal appearance tickets”), rather than make a custodial arrest for many types of criminal charges. In May 2020, DCJ released a research brief examining the use of DATs across New York State in 2018 to provide a baseline against which the future impact of these changes can be measured.

This report uses 2019 data to examine DAT arraignments and associated appearance rates in New York State district and city courts prior to the implementation of the reforms. In addition, the metrics are disaggregated by charge type, by geographic region (New York City, Suburban New York City and Upstate Cities), and by individual courts. Future research from DCJ will examine the actual impact of the 2020 Criminal Justice Reforms on DAT issuance in 2020. DCJ will also examine how DAT issuance and associated appearance rates have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic in New York State.

New York: The Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2021. 24p.

By Olive Lu, Erica Bond, Preeti Chauhan and Michael Rempel

For this report, DCJ analyzed how the Original Reforms and the Amended Reforms would have impacted pretrial releases for 2019 criminal cases in New York City. The report provides findings about how pretrial outcomes, including the number and proportion of cases where bail was set, would have changed under the Original and Amended Reforms. It also provides analyses of how outcomes would have differed by borough, by charge types, and by demographics (race/ethnicity, sex, and age).

Future research from DCJ will examine the actual impacts of bail reform on release outcomes in 2020. DCJ will also examine pretrial release outcomes and how they have changed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, nationwide protests calling for policing and criminal legal system reforms, and rising rates of certain types of violent crime in New York City.

New York: The Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2022. 48p.

By Olive Lu, Erica Bond, and Preeti Chauhan,

In April 2019, New York State passed significant reforms to the laws governing bail, which the state legislature then amended in April 2020 (collectively referred to as the "2020 Bail Reforms"). The first set of reforms (“Original Reforms”),1 which went into effect on January 1, 2020, included restrictions on which charges were eligible for money bail, mandated that people be released on recognizance (ROR)2 unless more restrictive conditions are needed to assure court appearance, required that judges set at least three forms of bail, and take into account an individual's ability to pay when setting money bail. The amendments to the bail reforms (“Amended Reforms”)3 went into effect in July 2020 and moved some charges that had been made ineligible for bail under the Original Reforms into the category of charges where judges have discretion to set bail.4 In September 2019, DCJ released a research brief that examined how the Original Reforms would have impacted the number and proportion of cases resulting in pretrial release without bail had they been in effect in 2018. This report updates DCJ’s prior research brief by using 2019 case data, applying the Original and Amended Reforms, and includes additional analyses on how the reforms would have impacted different types of charges and demographic groups in 2019.

New York: The Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, ,2021. 34p.

By Joanna Carraway Vitiello

This book examines the administration of justice in the small northern Italian town of Reggio Emilia at the end of the fourteenth century. Through an examination of material from the judicial archives from the period 1371-1409, this study investigates the development of public justice, inquisition procedure, and dispute resolution in late medieval Reggio Emilia, also incorporating comparative material, especially archival material from Bologna at the end of the fourteenth century. This study seeks to add to the discussion on dispute resolution and court processes in late medieval Europe, moving the discussion outside the major urban centers of late medieval Italy to the periphery of urban life.

Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2016. 232p.

Edited by Denise Meyerson, Catriona Mackenzie, and Therese MacDermott

This book bridges a scholarly divide between empirical and normative theorizing about procedural justice in the context of relations of power between citizens and the state. Empirical research establishes that people’s understanding of procedural justice is shaped by relational factors. A central premise of this volume is that this research is significant but needs to be complemented by normative theorizing that draws on relational theories of ethics and justice to explain the moral significance of procedures and make normative sense of people’s concerns about relational factors. The chapters in Part 1 provide comprehensive reviews of empirical studies of procedural justice in policing, courts and prisons. Part 2 explores empirical and normative perspectives on procedural justice and legitimacy. Part 3 examines philosophical approaches to procedural justice. Part 4 considers the implications of a relational perspective for the design of procedures in a range of legal contexts.

London; New York: Routledge, 2021. 285p.

By Sarah W. Craun and Alyssa Purdy

There are numerous federal criminal statutes authorizing a sentence of life as the maximum sentence allowed, such as for offenses involving drug trafficking,1 racketeering, 2 and firearms 3 crimes. While convictions under these statutes are common,4 sentences of life imprisonment are rare, accounting for only a small proportion of all federal offenders sentenced during the last six fiscal years. During fiscal years 2016 through 2021, federal judges imposed a sentence of life imprisonment (“life imprisonment sentence”) on 709 offenders. Another 799 offenders received a sentence so long that it had the practical effect of a life sentence (i.e., 470 months or longer) (“de facto life sentence”). Together these two groups of offenders represent only 0.4 percent of the total federal offender population during the last six fiscal years. By comparison, other federally sentenced offenders during this time received a median sentence of imprisonment of 24 months. Due to the infrequency and nature of life imprisonment, such sentences are of heightened interest to policymakers. In February 2015, the United States Sentencing Commission released Life Sentences in the Federal System, examining the application of life sentences by federal courts during fiscal year 2013.5 Using data from fiscal years 2016 through 2021, this report updates and augments the Commission’s previous findings by examining the offenses that led to the life sentences imprisonment imposed, along with offender demographics, criminal histories, and victim-related adjustments

Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission , 2022. 40p.

By April A. Christine, Courtney R. Semisch, Charles S. Ray and Amanda Russell

This comprehensive study of robbery offenders sentenced in fiscal year 2021 provides an analysis of the characteristics of robbery offenders, their criminal history, and their sentences imposed. The report also provides analyses on the prevalence of robbery offenses and how they were committed, including who was robbed, what was taken, the use or threatened use of physical force, the use of a firearm or other dangerous weapon, and whether any victim was injured or killed during a robbery.

Washington, DC: The United States Sentencing Commission, 2022. 60p.

By Sara Bastomski, Matt Herman, Alison Martin and Sara Friedman

Between April 2021 and February 2022, The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center conducted an analysis of racial equity across Montana’s criminal justice system in partnership with Montana judicial branch stakeholders. This work identified decision-making points in Montana’s criminal justice system in which there are disparities between American Indian and White people. Key findings include American Indian people are more likely to be incarcerated for felony criminal endangerment and public order offenses relative to comparable White people; American Indian people are incarcerated for longer than similarly situated White people; and American Indian people are more likely to be revoked from probation, conditional release, and parole than comparable White people. Based on these findings, the CSG Justice Center proposed five recommendations to improve racial equity in Montana’s criminal justice system.

New York: Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, 2022. 49p.

By Rebekah Diller

Increasingly, states are turning to so-called “user fees” and surcharges to underwrite criminal justice costs and close budget gaps. In this report, we focus on Florida, a state that relies so heavily on fees to fund its courts that observers have coined a term for it – “cash register justice.” Since 1996, Florida added more than 20 new categories of financial obligations for criminal defendants and, at the same time, eliminated most exemptions for those who cannot pay. The fee increases have not been accompanied by any evident consideration of their hidden costs: the cumulative impacts on those required to pay, the ways in which the debt can lead to new offenses, and the costs to counties, clerks and courts of collection mechanisms that fail to exempt those unable to pay. This report examines the impact of the Florida Legislature’s decision to levy more user fees on persons accused and convicted of crimes, without providing exemptions for the indigent. Its conclusions are troubling. Florida relies heavily on fees to underwrite its criminal justice system and, at times, uses monies generated by fees to subsidize general revenue. In many cases, the debts are uncollectible; performance standards for court clerks, for example, expect that only 9 percent of fees levied in felony cases will be collected. Yet, aggressive collection practices result in a range of collateral consequences. Missed payments produce more fees. Unpaid costs prompt the suspension of driving privileges (and, relatedly, the ability to get to work).

New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2019. 48p.

By Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research (APPR)

The pretrial system has, in recent years, become a focus of attention for governments, civil rights advocates, the media, and nonprofit organizations. Understandably so: it is the front door of the criminal legal system, and decisions made in the early stages of a criminal case have major impacts on everything that follows. As Berkeley law professor Caleb Foote wrote in 1956, “Pretrial decisions determine mostly everything.” This adage is true for individual cases: whether or not someone is detained while awaiting trial has major impacts on whether they are found guilty, whether they are sentenced to incarceration, and how long those sentences are.Unnecessary detention can also disrupt lives, leading to lost jobs and housing, family instability, and even increased likelihood of rearrest. It is also true for the system as a whole: virtually all of the growth in the U.S. jail population in the 21st century is attributable to pretrial incarceration. Housing people before trial costs county and state governments at least $14 billion annually. So, it is critical that we get pretrial decisions right. But in most of the country, the pretrial system is deeply flawed. There is an overreliance on custodial arrest instead of citations or summonses; release and detention are determined more by money than by judicial officers making intentional decisions about public safety or flight; defense counsel is not present, despite someone’s liberty being at stake; and pretrial services focus on monitoring rather than supporting people in the community. In addition, like the rest of the criminal legal system, the pretrial system suffers from systemic racism, with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) disproportionately arrested and booked, subjected to higher financial conditions of release, and more frequently detained. These practices result in many people who could safely be released remaining in jail, often for long periods. And they do not enhance—and frequently undermine—community safety and well-being. Improving the pretrial system requires a comprehensive approach; we cannot focus on a single decision point or a single agency. And the problems will not be fixed with a single solution such as an actuarial assessment tool or even the abolishment of financial conditions. Rather, we need to look at the system as a whole, involve policymakers from all agencies, and engage the community meaningfully in the improvement process.

Silver Spring, MD: Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research (APPR) , 2022. 29p.

By John D. Ciorciari and Anne Heindel

More than thirty years after the fall of the Pol Pot regime, a UN-backed tribunal, fusing Cambodian and international law, procedure, and personnel, was established to try key Khmer Rouge officials for atrocities committed in the late 1970s. In this definitive scholarly treatment of the “Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia” (ECCC) from legal and political perspectives, John D. Ciorciari and Anne Heindel examine the ECCC’s institutional features, compare it to other hybrid and international criminal courts, evaluate its operations, and draw lessons for the future. Ciorciari and Heindel begin by discussing the political factors and historical contingencies that led the United Nations and Cambodian Government to create a hybrid tribunal with a number of unique features. Next, they examine the tribunal’s operations to date, focusing on how its institutional form has affected its various intended functions. They argue that many aspects of the ECCC’s judicial proceedings have been broadly consistent with international standards and that the Court’s in-country location has provided important benefits in terms of public outreach and victim participation. Nevertheless, the authors demonstrate that the ECCC’s complex, divided institutional structure and wrangling between national and international actors have slowed the proceedings, contributed to administrative irregularities, led to due process concerns, and jeopardized the Court’s public legitimacy and ability to leave a legacy of credible justice. Ciorciari and Heindel argue that the ECCC’s experiences reveal many of the challenges of managing a mass crimes process, especially in the context of a hybrid court. They conclude with recommendations on measures that can be taken to meet some of those challenges going forward.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. 462p.

By Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira and David A. Shirk

This is one of a series of special reports that have been published on a semi-annual basis by Justice in Mexico since 2010 on issues related to crime and violence, judicial sector reform, and human rights in Mexico. This report examines Mexico’s progress toward implementation of the country’s "new” criminal justice system, which introduces the use of oral, adversarial proceedings and other measures to improve the handling of criminal cases in terms of efficiency, transparency, and fairness to the parties involved. This report is based on several months of research and data analysis, field observation, and active participation by the authors in the process of training law professors, law students, and attorneys in preparation for implementation of the reforms. The report provides a general background on the 2008 judicial reform initiative, and examines Mexican government efforts to implement the reforms at the federal, state, and judicial district level, relying on a unique dataset and maps generated by the Justice in Mexico program based at the University of San Diego. As an additional resource, this report also contains a translation of the 2008 constitutional changes underlying the reforms. Ultimately, the authors find that there has been significant progress toward the implementation of the new criminal justice system, and offer recommendations to assist the Mexican government and international aid organizations to help Mexico sustain this progress in the years to come. This report does not represent the views or opinions of the University of San Diego or the sponsoring and supporting organizations, and the authors are solely responsible for any errors, omissions, and opinions in the report.

San Diego: Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, 2015. 53p.

By Nancy Cortes, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira, and David A. Shirk

Survey of Judges, Prosecutors, and Public Defenders. The Justiciabarómetro (Justice Barometer) research initiative consists of a series of studies that evaluate the perceptions and professional development of Mexican-justice-sector personnel through large-scale surveys, focus groups and interviews, and the analysis of public policy to better understand the strength, challenges, and needs of the Mexican criminal justice system. Thus far, the Justiciabarómetro has surveyed over 8,000 municipal police in six municipalities in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Zone in 2009, in Ciudad Juárez in 2011, and Tijuana in 2014. Justice in Mexico has also surveyed nearly a thousand judges, prosecutors, and public defenders in 11 Mexican states through a 2010 study and in the 2016 follow up study summarized in this report.

San Diego: Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, 2017. 54p.Survey of Judges, Prosecutors, and Public Defenders

By Anne Le Huérou

In April 2009, a police officer, D. Yevsyukov opened fire at people in a Moscow supermarket, killing two and wounding several others. In March 2012, a young man died in custody after being raped with a champagne bottle in a police station of the city of Kazan. Soon after, the police reform, passed in March 2011, was considered as a “failure” by the newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev. Those two cases of police violence, far from being exceptional, are almost a part of the routine – though not always with such deadly endings - in many police precincts in Russia and comprise a growing amount of the convictions against Russia at the ECHR. These two particular episodes can serve as landmarks for what I would like to develop in this contribution, for the first played a starting point for building-up police violence and deviance issues as a public matter that further helped and pushed the State to undertake a reform, under the presidency of D Medvedev, and the second led to a kind of acknowledgement that the task was too huge, at the very moment when the coming back of V Putin as the President was sending down the issue from the political agenda. In between, very diverse, vivid and sometimes at first glance paradoxical mobilizations against police violence, corruption and misbehavior have spread all over the country. Would they be NGOs helping victims of police violence to seek justice through court, provocative performances from art-groups or people taking arms against the police, these mobilizations

Paris: University of Paris, 2016. 20p.

Edited by Annie Barbara Chikwanha

In Africa, criminal justice systems remain rather fragile. This is not only because of the human rights practices of some African governments, but because the changes on the continent demand good governance and democracy. Criminal justice cannot be separated from democracy inasmuch as its effective implementation has become a barometer of democratic practices throughout the developed world. Africa`s deficiencies in the criminal justice system can benefit from a comprehensive scrutiny not just of the technical legal issues, but of the ethical issues too, as well as the dissection of international norms, institutions and criminal justice processes and their relevance for Africa. This monograph undoubtedly makes a significant contribution to the fledgling criminological writings on the African continent and all the articles reveal the challenges the criminal justice systems in Africa have to overcome in order to fulfill their commitments to international standards and norms.

Pretoria, South Africa: Institute of Security Studies, 2009. 124p.