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Policy guidelines for bail: An experiment in court reform
CL’RREKT
PUBLICATlONS
media have sensationalized and shows how the media benefit from the practice. He also examines crime statistics, pointing out various flaws, with some attention to the bureaucratic factors underlying the faulty reporting of crime data. Part II, “Crime and the Criminal Justice System ,” is concerned with demonstrating the inadequacy of the criminal justice system in the United States to reduce crime significantly. Wright denies that criminal justice officials understand the causes of crime and are motivated solely by a desire to attack these problems, pointing instead to self interest as a major determinant of criminal justice policies. Wright also describes current conditions in American prisons and gives reasons why these institutions are unlikely to modify the behavior of the individuals subjected to them in the direction intended. His view of the operation of the criminal justice system is consistently bleak, and his explanation of the irony of increased allocation of resources to institutions that clearly are failing in their purpose is that Americans wish to shift the blame for problems that are endemic to the culture onto others. To the extent that Wright offers solutions, they lie in trying to build community. Although Wright has stated that violence has always characterized American society, he asserts that the changes that have occurred in American life styles since the 1960s have eroded communities that used to exist. These changes, rather than increased crime, are responsible for our fear of each other, and finding new bases for creating communities is the legitimate way to combat both the fear and the crime problem. The book includes a bibliographical essay.
Policy Guidelines for Bail: An Experiment in Court Reform by John S. Goldkamp and
Michael R. Gottfredson. Temple University Press (Broad and Oxford Streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122), 1985, 267 pp. hardcover-$39.95. Concern about bail and detention practices in the United States spawned a massive
ABSTRACTS
469
reform movement in the 196Os, resulting in significant changes in bail laws throughout the country. Interest in these issues continues to increase, and revision of bail laws seems to be occurring at an even more rapid rate today than in the 1960s. At the present time, two diametrically opposed perspectives on the issues are being debated-the view that inefficient bail procedures are contributing to prison overcrowding versus the fear that bail laws fail to confine dangerous defendants before trial. In addition, concerns about fairness, feelings that the financial resources of defendants should not be the factor determining whether or not they are detained during the pretrial period, motivate reform efforts today, as they did in the 1960s. Concerns about overcrowding also were expressed in the 1960s but the financial crunch in the prison system has accelerated tremendously, and stepped up efforts to alter bail and detention procedures at the present time are partly a response to that crisis. At the same time the 1980s have seen an enormous increase in the fear of crime, fueling the opposing drive to ensure that bail and detention safeguard the public from dangerous offenders during the pretrial period. These two opposed views are by no means unrelated; restrictive policies intended to alleviate the fear of crime contribute to the overcrowding problem, and the pressures increase on both sides while basic issues remain unresolved. In the current volume, Goldkamp and Gottfredson report a unique experiment involving collaboration on the part of academic researchers and judges in Philadelphia’s Municipal Court. They conducted an empirical study of existing bail and detention practices in the court, following the cases of 4,800 defendants who appeared before twenty Municipal Court judges at preliminary arraignment between the late summer of 1977 and the summer of 1979. The descriptive findings then were used to construct three models of guidelines. The first offered guidelines based on customary practice but with criteria that were made explicit and decision ranges that were mapped out in a consistent fashion. The
470
CURRENT
PUBLICATIONS
second was conceived of as an actuarial or predictive model, specifically aimed both at assuring that defendants would appear at trial and at protecting the community from additional criminal acts by defendants on pretrial release. The third model sought to combine the strengths of the first two. Its rationale was that guidelines ought to be rooted in customary practice but enhanced by knowledge of empirically based predictors of defendant failure. Municipal Court judges participated in the decisionmaking process that resulted in the selection of the third model for experimentation, a process Goldkamp and Gottfredson describe in detail, putting it into the context of current policy debates regarding bail reform. The remainder of the book describes the experiment and its results. The bail practices of two groups of judges, randomly selected, one instructed in the use of the guidelines and the other not, were compared. Findings were complicated. Rates of defendant failure during pretrial release were roughly comparable under the two approaches. Guidelines neither increased nor decreased the rate of detention or duration of pretrial confinement. However, the bail decisions of the guidelines judges were substantially less variable on the whole. And, although they were similar on several gross dimensions, the decisions of the experimental and control judges were different in major ways, with the greatest difference appearing in the region associated with the greatest inequities-the use of cash bail in moderate to serious cases, in which the experimental judges generally assigned lower cash amounts. One of the major conclusions of the book is that the collaborative approach utilized was one of the most important features of the experiment’s success. The book includes an appreciative prologue by Joseph R. Glancey, President Judge of the Philadelphia Municipal Court, in which he reports that the Municipal Court voted to adopt the bail guidelines for routine use in 1982 and has since revised them several times. Judge Glancey also reports that the National Institute of Justice has extended the re-
ABSTRACTS
search to address the pretrial release and detention concerns of courts in Boston, Dade County, Florida, and Maricopa County, Arizona.
Behavioral and Social Science: Fifty Years of Discovery edited by Neil J. Smelser and
Dean R. Gerstein. National Academy Press (2101. Constitution Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20418), 1985, 298 pp., hardcover-$29.50. Behavioral and Social Science Research: Fifty Years of Discovery is a collection of
essays produced in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the “Ogburn Report” on Recent Social Trends in the United States. It was compiled by the Committee on Basic Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, established in 1980 at the request of the National Science Foundation. The committee’s major task is to assess the scientific validity and social utility of research in the behavioral and social sciences in order to assist the NSF in responding to congressional overseers. The committee’s first project was an extensive study of research and methodology in these fields, largely for the purpose of specifying criteria to be used in guiding national support of basic research. It produced Behavioral and Social source
Science
Recent
Social
Research:
A National
Re-
in 1982. The current volume reflects the committee’s further work in examining long term trends in social science research. The papers were presented first at a symposium held in November, 1983 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Trends
in the United States
(McGraw-Hill, 1933), the report of the committee of social scientists appointed by Herbert Hoover in 1929 to investigate the overall condition of the nation. The present volume takes the Ogburn Report as a reference point. For example, the first four essays focus on theories and methods aimed largely at understanding social and economic changes since the Hoover era. The next section deals with a specific change in social science research
PUBLICATlONS
media have sensationalized and shows how the media benefit from the practice. He also examines crime statistics, pointing out various flaws, with some attention to the bureaucratic factors underlying the faulty reporting of crime data. Part II, “Crime and the Criminal Justice System ,” is concerned with demonstrating the inadequacy of the criminal justice system in the United States to reduce crime significantly. Wright denies that criminal justice officials understand the causes of crime and are motivated solely by a desire to attack these problems, pointing instead to self interest as a major determinant of criminal justice policies. Wright also describes current conditions in American prisons and gives reasons why these institutions are unlikely to modify the behavior of the individuals subjected to them in the direction intended. His view of the operation of the criminal justice system is consistently bleak, and his explanation of the irony of increased allocation of resources to institutions that clearly are failing in their purpose is that Americans wish to shift the blame for problems that are endemic to the culture onto others. To the extent that Wright offers solutions, they lie in trying to build community. Although Wright has stated that violence has always characterized American society, he asserts that the changes that have occurred in American life styles since the 1960s have eroded communities that used to exist. These changes, rather than increased crime, are responsible for our fear of each other, and finding new bases for creating communities is the legitimate way to combat both the fear and the crime problem. The book includes a bibliographical essay.
Policy Guidelines for Bail: An Experiment in Court Reform by John S. Goldkamp and
Michael R. Gottfredson. Temple University Press (Broad and Oxford Streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122), 1985, 267 pp. hardcover-$39.95. Concern about bail and detention practices in the United States spawned a massive
ABSTRACTS
469
reform movement in the 196Os, resulting in significant changes in bail laws throughout the country. Interest in these issues continues to increase, and revision of bail laws seems to be occurring at an even more rapid rate today than in the 1960s. At the present time, two diametrically opposed perspectives on the issues are being debated-the view that inefficient bail procedures are contributing to prison overcrowding versus the fear that bail laws fail to confine dangerous defendants before trial. In addition, concerns about fairness, feelings that the financial resources of defendants should not be the factor determining whether or not they are detained during the pretrial period, motivate reform efforts today, as they did in the 1960s. Concerns about overcrowding also were expressed in the 1960s but the financial crunch in the prison system has accelerated tremendously, and stepped up efforts to alter bail and detention procedures at the present time are partly a response to that crisis. At the same time the 1980s have seen an enormous increase in the fear of crime, fueling the opposing drive to ensure that bail and detention safeguard the public from dangerous offenders during the pretrial period. These two opposed views are by no means unrelated; restrictive policies intended to alleviate the fear of crime contribute to the overcrowding problem, and the pressures increase on both sides while basic issues remain unresolved. In the current volume, Goldkamp and Gottfredson report a unique experiment involving collaboration on the part of academic researchers and judges in Philadelphia’s Municipal Court. They conducted an empirical study of existing bail and detention practices in the court, following the cases of 4,800 defendants who appeared before twenty Municipal Court judges at preliminary arraignment between the late summer of 1977 and the summer of 1979. The descriptive findings then were used to construct three models of guidelines. The first offered guidelines based on customary practice but with criteria that were made explicit and decision ranges that were mapped out in a consistent fashion. The
470
CURRENT
PUBLICATIONS
second was conceived of as an actuarial or predictive model, specifically aimed both at assuring that defendants would appear at trial and at protecting the community from additional criminal acts by defendants on pretrial release. The third model sought to combine the strengths of the first two. Its rationale was that guidelines ought to be rooted in customary practice but enhanced by knowledge of empirically based predictors of defendant failure. Municipal Court judges participated in the decisionmaking process that resulted in the selection of the third model for experimentation, a process Goldkamp and Gottfredson describe in detail, putting it into the context of current policy debates regarding bail reform. The remainder of the book describes the experiment and its results. The bail practices of two groups of judges, randomly selected, one instructed in the use of the guidelines and the other not, were compared. Findings were complicated. Rates of defendant failure during pretrial release were roughly comparable under the two approaches. Guidelines neither increased nor decreased the rate of detention or duration of pretrial confinement. However, the bail decisions of the guidelines judges were substantially less variable on the whole. And, although they were similar on several gross dimensions, the decisions of the experimental and control judges were different in major ways, with the greatest difference appearing in the region associated with the greatest inequities-the use of cash bail in moderate to serious cases, in which the experimental judges generally assigned lower cash amounts. One of the major conclusions of the book is that the collaborative approach utilized was one of the most important features of the experiment’s success. The book includes an appreciative prologue by Joseph R. Glancey, President Judge of the Philadelphia Municipal Court, in which he reports that the Municipal Court voted to adopt the bail guidelines for routine use in 1982 and has since revised them several times. Judge Glancey also reports that the National Institute of Justice has extended the re-
ABSTRACTS
search to address the pretrial release and detention concerns of courts in Boston, Dade County, Florida, and Maricopa County, Arizona.
Behavioral and Social Science: Fifty Years of Discovery edited by Neil J. Smelser and
Dean R. Gerstein. National Academy Press (2101. Constitution Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20418), 1985, 298 pp., hardcover-$29.50. Behavioral and Social Science Research: Fifty Years of Discovery is a collection of
essays produced in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the “Ogburn Report” on Recent Social Trends in the United States. It was compiled by the Committee on Basic Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, established in 1980 at the request of the National Science Foundation. The committee’s major task is to assess the scientific validity and social utility of research in the behavioral and social sciences in order to assist the NSF in responding to congressional overseers. The committee’s first project was an extensive study of research and methodology in these fields, largely for the purpose of specifying criteria to be used in guiding national support of basic research. It produced Behavioral and Social source
Science
Recent
Social
Research:
A National
Re-
in 1982. The current volume reflects the committee’s further work in examining long term trends in social science research. The papers were presented first at a symposium held in November, 1983 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Trends
in the United States
(McGraw-Hill, 1933), the report of the committee of social scientists appointed by Herbert Hoover in 1929 to investigate the overall condition of the nation. The present volume takes the Ogburn Report as a reference point. For example, the first four essays focus on theories and methods aimed largely at understanding social and economic changes since the Hoover era. The next section deals with a specific change in social science research