Utah Judicial Council Uses Former Enron-Billionaire’s Algorithm To “Fix” The Criminal Justice System as San Francisco Pushes Back The Utah Judicial Council recently upended criminal justice in Utah by enacting a new statewide bail schedule that became effective on October 1, 2020. The bail schedule used to be based onRead More →
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Lakewood, CO (October 14, 2020) – The Utah Judicial Council’s recent decision to implement new bail guidelines for the state is facing criticism that it is both unconstitutional and compromises public safety. The policy-making body of the court system voted in August to create a new statewideRead More →
Pretrial Risk Assessments by Jeffrey Clayton September 2020 (excerpt from Mediate.com) Nearly everyone both within and outside of the legal profession has heard of bail reform. Couched typically as “America’s cash bail system,” it has been branded as evil and in desperate need of repair despite being one of the ten coreRead More →
University Study Finds Colorado Pretrial Risk Assessment Tool is Biased Against African-American Defendants We’ve been hard at work the last couple of years warning state legislators and the Colorado Commission on Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) to stop advocating for statewide pretrial risk assessments and pretrial services because the Colorado Pretrial RiskRead More →
“F the Courts” and Free Repeat Rapists and Cop Killers: Hollywood-Funded Bail Funds Harming Public Safety and Destabilizing Criminal Justice Bail funds are popping up all over the country in an attempt to upend the criminal justice system. In all but one state (New York), these bail funds go unregulated,Read More →
The Buckeye Institute Declares Victory On Bail Reform Amid Clear Defeat The Buckeye Institute has done everything possible in their push to “end cash bail” in Ohio the last few years by advocating for the statewide mandate of pretrial risk assessments and the expansion of risk-based preventative detention. Recent changesRead More →
Unregulated Charitable Bail Funds Upending the Criminal Justice System and Federal Immigration In Wake of Anti-Criminal Justice Momentum While Minneapolis simply considers eliminating the police department altogether, the unregulated Minnesota Freedom Fund is not so quietly making their mark on criminal justice: wealthy donors are giving millions of dollars toRead More →
Ohio Supreme Court Did Not Disallow Risk Assessments In Ohio—They Were Made Mandatory By Legislative Edict A Decade Ago Recently, the Ohio Supreme Court sent over bail reform rules to the legislature that did not include, in the body of the rules, the mandatory use of a pretrial risk assessmentRead More →
California Court Of Appeals Rules The Emergency Statewide Bond Schedule, Like Other Bail Schedules, Do Not Bind California Judges On April 6th, the California Judicial Council issued a statewide emergency order setting a statewide bail schedule in California to $0.00 for most misdemeanors and many felony offenses. The measure wasRead More →
Texas Governor Says No to Get out of Jail Free Policies Due to COVID-19; Texas Supreme Court and a Federal Judge Agree Bail reform activist groups are not being shy about using the recent pandemic to advance their cause. Even in jails where the rate of infection within the entireRead More →
