Promising Results in Two New Bail Reform Evaluation Reports

On January 2020, North Carolina’s Judicial Districts 21 (Forsyth County) and 2 (Washington, Beaufort, Martin, Tyrrell, and Hyde counties) implemented bail reform. In both jurisdictions, reforms were implemented after a collaborative, consensus process. Participants included judges, prosecutors, defenders, magistrates, clerks, law enforcement leaders and others. Judicial District 21 adopted a new decision-making tool to be used by judges and magistrates when setting conditions of release. Judicial District 2 adopted a similar tool for use by magistrates and implemented new first appearance proceedings for all in-custody defendants, including those charged with misdemeanors. In both districts, the new decision-making tools create a presumption for conditions other than secured bond for certain low-level offenses and screen other cases to identify additional defendants who can be released on conditions other than a secured bond. The tools also center in the decision-making process the requirement in G.S. 15A-534 that a condition other than a secured bond must be imposed unless it will not reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance, will pose a danger of injury to any person or is likely to result in interference with the criminal proceeding. Details about the reforms and the process that led to them are available in project reports here and here. The UNC School of Government Criminal Justice Innovation Lab is executing empirical evaluations of the implemented reforms, and last month we released our first quarterly evaluation reports. The full reports are available here and here. This post summarizes top line results. Conditions Imposed In 2019, before reforms were implemented, [...]