Here’s a link to two pretty
great reports put out by the John Jay College’s Prisoner Reentry Institute and
the Arnold Foundation. The first is called, Pretrial
Practice: Rethinking the Front End of the Criminal Justice System, and the
second is called, Pretrial Practice:
Building a National Research Agenda for the Front End of the Criminal Justice
System.
I was at the conference leading
to the first report, and a bunch of us submitted papers. Interestingly, though,
the whole thing started revolving around a single issue, which was the need for
more human dignity in the criminal process. It began with a discussion of Jonathan Simon’s paper on pretrial dignity, and pretty much continued on that
theme for the rest of the conference.
I only mention that because I
see that ExpertBail, a network of so-called “professional” bail agents created
by AIA Surety to challenge the public’s negative perception of those agents,
continues to post pictures and make fun of how defendants look on its Facebook
page – pretty much the opposite of caring for human dignity.
