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© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0 (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Over the past three decades, the number of people housed in local jails has more than tripled. Yet when it comes to reforming the nation's incarceration policies, write Jennifer Copp and William Bales, researchers, policymakers, and the public alike have focused almost exclusively on state and federal prisons. If you took a snapshot on a single day, the prison population would far exceed the population of local jails. But, the authors show, compared to prisons, roughly 18 times more people are admitted to and released from jails every year. Furthermore, about two-thirds of jail inmates have yet to be convicted of a crime, and they often languish behind bars only because they can't afford to pay bail. And although jails are intended for adults, on any given day roughly 4,000 young people under age 18 are confined in local jails. In this article, Copp and Bales provide a broad overview of US jails, including facilities and operations, characteristics of inmates, and the conditions of confinement, and they make a number of suggestions for policy and practice. In particular, they argue that the justice system should slash the use of money bail, which disproportionately harms the poor and minorities. Specifically, they recommend that jurisdictions adopt validated risk assessment tools to help make decisions about who should and shouldn't be detained before trial; expand pretrial services that can, among other things, monitor compliance with release conditions; divert more people away from the criminal justice system; consider alternatives to jail, such as probation, for convicted offenders; and expedite case processing to decrease the time to trial and thus the overall length of jail stays.

Details

Title
Jails and Local Justice System Reform: Overview and Recommendations
Author
Copp, Jennifer E 1 ; Bales, William D 2 

 assistant professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University 
 professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University 
Pages
103-124
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Spring 2018
Publisher
Princeton University
ISSN
10548289
e-ISSN
15501558
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2434476483
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0 (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.