Clark, J. (2009). The state of pre-trial release decision-making in tribal jurisdictions: closing the knowledge gap. Journal of court innovation, 2(2), 298-327.
In this journal, Clark informs the world how the state of pre-trial release in tribal jurisdiction operates in the United States. This article sought to establish the existing gap in the knowledge of how pre-trial decision-making should operate in tribal courts across the United States. According to the author, the pre-trial court order seems to be eliciting sharp reactions and it must have appeared to demean justice among some tribes.
In some tribal courts, numerous defences leave the courts on pre-trial releases and in a very quick manner, while in other tribal courts, defends remain detained for long periods. However, the articles still recognize how courts have learned on the impact of pretrial release based on the risks affiliated with community security in case of non-appearance of any defendant, the absolute reason for the credibility and reliability of this journal.
Cohen, T., & Reaves, B. (2004). Pre-trial release of felony defendants in state courts. US Department of Justice. Web.
In this manuscript, Cohen and Reaves begin by explaining the actual scenario of the American court system about pre-trial and bail releases in fourteen consecutive years (1990-2004). The article gives an account of the historical perspective of financial and non-financial pre-trial releases. Based on the biennial State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS), at the advent of 1998, financial pre-trial releases replaced the non-financial requiring posting of bail. The influx in the overuse of financial releases constantly became prevalent throughout successive years consequently resulting in competitive commercial surety bonding that affected the court systems to the later. The use of high surety amount or the contradiction of the same was evident in serious violent offences that affected the court systems. According to this report, bailing and pre-trial become inseparable and great actors to justice in numerous civil courts.
Cole, G., & Smith, C. (2009). The American system of criminal justice, international edition. Belmont, CT: Wadsworth Publishing.
This book describes the paradigms behind the American system of criminal justice typically to juvenile criminality and the conditions underlying the pre-trial release issues surrounding the United States. The authors, Cole and Smith understand that criminal or offence is part of human beings and laws must prevail to avert criminality and promote justice. According to the authors, despite having a reputable growth over several years, courts in the United States have consistently failed to provide an equitable share of justice.
The authors noticed that there exist numerous ethical disparities in the issues surrounding the pre-trial release, probation and even financial influence on the court systems regarding the pre-trial and bail processes. The ability to withstand charges incorporated in the bailing and the amount required for defendants to leave the court on bonds makes the court systems deem biased as the financial power consequently hampers the quest for justice. The provisions of this book portray how the amount of bail in numerous courts reflects on the racial, financial status and ethnic discrimination influence courts systems.
Devers, L. (2011). Bail Decision-making. Bureau of Justice Assistance. Web.
In this comprehensive report, Devers sought to investigate the entire process of bail decision-making and how it influences the court systems. The report contains detailed information on the prevailing condition of the courts to bailing. Devers begins with an attractive background, that contains the contemporary data relatable to the pre-trial detention. Based on recent data on pre-trial detention, the number of defendants’ detained waiting for trial has gradually augmented depending on prevailing bail conditions.
The amount of bail posed to a certain defendant may influence the during taken to consider a pre-trial and the criminality of such individuals may pose security threats to the public and even influence decision making in the courts. Since providing comprehensive data on the influence of bail on pre-trial release, the article becomes reliable and relevant to the conclusion of the intended report on bail and pre-trial circumstances.
Ferguson, T., & Johnson, R. (2009). Too Big to Bail: The “Paulson Put,” Presidential Politics and the Global Financial Meltdown. International Journal of Political Economy, 38(1), 3–34.
‘Too Big to Bail’ the connotation embedded in this manuscript is that some offences seem too risky to release defendants on cash or any form of bail. Ferguson and Johnson relate the issues of bailouts with the political events that occasioned the American public before the national elections of 2008. The centre of attention to this report rested upon the influence of bailouts on court processes and the entire decision-making as exhibited by some courts during this political moment.
The politics of this moment saw the financial issues in the United States especially the financial institutions becoming increasingly overwhelming and consequently affecting the entire court procedures and the financial status of the United States. The courts allowed extensive bailouts to the financial institutions, which committed certain offences leading to a global economic crunch and affected the entire decision-making process in the United States. This happened because the courts over bailed some financial institutions in the United States.
Hall, K., & Clark, D. (2002). The Oxford Companion to American Law. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
This article by Hall and Clark portrays a substantial background to the emergence of financial bailing as a condition for pre-trial. The commentaries made in this book of bailing are twofold. The traditional bailing according to the book involved simply a ‘surety’ in form of a friend or even neighbour who promised to ensure the defendant appears for trial. However, things changed dramatically in the nineteenth century when cash bail became a ubiquitous approach.
According to Hall and Clark, bail has three significances: minimizing the detention of persons whose verdict may prove innocent, preventing hardship on families who economically rely on indicted and enabling accused persons to have time to seek legal assistance on their cases. However, the issue of prevailing produced a different contentious matter that supposedly failed the court systems to prevent certain issues from arising within the courts. Bailing as a condition for pre-trial release within the courts allowed individuals to raise inessential arguments on the freedom rights of the accused, an issue that makes this argument relevant to this topic.
VanNostrand, M. (2007). Our journey toward pre-trial justice. A journal of correctional Philosophy and practice, 71(2), 20-25.
VanNostrand portrays a greater insight into the prevailing bailing conditions in numerous countries including the United States. According to this document, the current laws and conditions governing the bailing system have increasingly accredited accused individuals with certain inalienable rights during the pre-trial stage. One of the defendant’s rights to bail is the right to right to bail that is not excessive and the right to a fair and speedy trial. The two pre-trial conditions have consistently affected the court processes in the United States with the accused having more legal powers than the courts themselves. The interests have shifted from protecting the public to ensuring the appearance of defendants to trial. This document, therefore, highlights important legal matters affecting the bailing process concerning the court systems.
Johnson, M. (2012). Bail: Reforming Policies to Address Overcrowded Jails, the Impact of Race on Detention, and Community Revival in Harris County, Texas. Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy, 7(1), 43-85.
The document provides a background on how the federal government as well as several other state and local governments espoused tough legal policies to avert crime in the united in the 1970s, consequently affecting the court systems. According to Johnson, the new laws paved room for the explosion of the incarceration process in prisons in the entire United States as well as affecting the conditions in the local jails.
The document argues that instead of assisting the prisons to reduce congestion it worsened the situation by witnessing increased numbers of detainees before pre-trial since they could not afford the bails agreed. The constitution and its reforms on the bail system as well-posed great challenges to the court system. Some major reforms on the rights enjoyed by the defendants on pre-trial included rights to bail and rights to the due trial process.
Justice Policy Institute. (2011). Expanding Criminal Justice Options by Considering Policies of Other Nations. Web.
This article provides a background highlighting the court process from the moment when an individual faces charges. It explains two main conditions inherent in due charges, defendants detained in jail until their trial or released on bail to wait for trial. Manipulation of the court systems occurs during this moment especially when the case involves private companies in the terms, ‘commercial bailing.’ The jails become either congested affecting the accommodation of convicts or those who manage the high bails pave their way back to the public causing much communal security concerns. This article imperatively argues that numerous cases have reported total escape from the courts during the pre-trial period, consequently failing the court systems and affecting the achievement of justice.
Mamalian, C.A. (2011). State of the science of pretrial risk assessment. Bureau of Justice Assistance. Web.
Mamalian provides an important pre-trial risk assessment that involves balancing justice and court supremacy. Mamalian sought to challenge the pre-trial conditions under the given constitution that provides numerous protective privileges to the accused.
Mamalian claims that presumption of innocence forces courts to release offenders under the least restrictive conditions challenging the balancing of an individual’s presumption of innocence with community safety, protection of witnesses/victims, ensuring defendants come back to trial and personal liberty. Secondly, crimes committed by defendants during the bail stage remain legally acceptable and the nature of the crimes during this moment consists of different approaches. More importantly to this topic, according to Mamalian, for the third risk drawing a difference in then, pre-trial justice outcome measures becomes another potential challenge to the court system as balancing the appearance rate of abused and the pre-trial good conduct poses numerous challenges.
Neubauer, D., & Fradella, H. (2010). America’s courts and the criminal justice system. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
This article portrays how the court process suffers from the bailing system with racial prejudice and the safety of the accusers and witnesses remaining undermined during the pre-trial period. The documents argue that holding accused individuals through preventive detention while waiting for the trial seems much better compared to revealing defendants on bail or bonds. Neubauer and Fradella provide three concrete risk related reasons including possibilities of defendants fleeing, obstructing fundamental evidence by threatening, injuring, intimidating or even killing prospective bystanders or even the form of violence may not require bonds but life imprisonment.
Financially potential lawbreakers normally find this privilege as comforting and keep on overriding the bailing aspect as justice remains a legal quest for the poor. The aspect of bonds and bailing in courts gives felonies a chance to hide materially potential evidence that might deem essential to determine the verdict of the offender. Based on the report of this book, the bailing process, therefore, gives the prosecution a difficult moment to determine the direction of the case to reinforce justice in some cases.
Scheb, J. (2010). Criminal law and procedure. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
The book provides a comprehensive argument into the provisions of the Eighth Amendment law of the federal constitution that condemns excessive bailing on the defendants. As stated, excessive bail shall not be a requirement to have the defendant released on bail conditions. According to Scheb, this law subdues efforts by the prosecution to apprehend the perpetrators to the trial period of the court system.
The article provides four major modes of pre-trial release including personal recognizance, release to the custody of a risk bearer, posting an individual bond or even posting a surety bond. Despite their effectiveness in the court system, the conditions of pre-trial have become loop whorls to criminality. Bonds and bails on pre-trial according to the author affect the court prosecution department in two major ways. Bails and bonds are limitations to prosecutorial conduct and some prosecutions remain racially motivated. Therefore, this book provides an overview of how justice may fail when prosecution lack enough evidence under unavoidable circumstances and prejudice may prevail in some cases.
Velázquez, T., Neal, M., & Bradford, S. (2012). Bailing on justice: the dysfunctional system of using money to buy pre-trial freedom. Prison legal news, 23(11), 1-55.
The article tries to provide a comprehensive insight on how money bail has failed to buy pre-trial release or if bought it harbours several failures. The appearance rate of the perpetrators according to the authors remains convincingly true that money is not the only option to consider as a surety of the defendant’s appearance to the trial. According to statistics collected by the authors, only 6-9 per cent of defendants of the total cases between the 1960s and 1970s managed to turn up to the trial section of the court. FTA denotes ‘Fail to Appear’ as monetary bonds are profit oriented and possess several risks that affect the court during the trial period, especially the prosecution. This journal, therefore, becomes important to the topic as it portrays the failures affiliated with money bailing.
Walker, S. (2010). Sense and nonsense about crime, drugs, and communities: a policy guide. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Sense and nonsense about crime, drugs and communities provide a critical dilemma existing between the court systems and the quest for justice in numerous countries. However, the book concentrates on providing a substantial background onto the circumstances unfolding within the preventive detention and the bailing laws in the US. According to the author, the American policies governing the locking up of offenders remain a constant controversy among civil laws.
The author argues how preventive detention seems to be the most effective way of handling criminality and limits the diplomacy of judges. Judges according to the author have ‘bleeding hearts’ meaning soft-hearted and thus have too much discretion towards determining the release of dangerous criminals on bail. The author continuously argues that the pre-trial conditions governing the United States’ courts suffer most from the constitutionality and therefore judges are unable to make much out of their regalia to ensure justice. This book remains imperative to the topic as it consistently provides the underlying relation between preventive detention and bails/bonds concerning justice.
Zweig, J. (2010). Extraordinary conditions of release under the bail reform act. Harvard Journal on Legislation, 47, 556-585.
This journal explains how justice remains undermined in the circumstances where bail is the requirement for pre-trial release. According to Zweig, considering individual arrestees’ financial ability and general access to funds for bail violates some rights among citizens. The journal argues that justice must remain neutral and equal to every individual regardless of race or financial class. The equal protection clause remained undermined in the circumstances where judges grant extraordinary bail conditions based on their financial capability. This is because the pre-trial release is based on financial stability where the less fortunate suffer.
The provisions of this journal become significant to the requirements of this topic since it calls for extensive reforms on the Bail Reform Act and the consideration of the Equal Protection Clause that are equally important to the judicial system in the United States. The article also touches on the Eighth Amendment bill that involves defendants’ power over bails and gives them excess liberty interest in pretrial release.