Criminal Justice Review

The administration of bail in the United States is a process which has a tendency to be misunderstood and often misused by the general public and practitioners of the criminal justice system. It is generally thought that the bail process prevents those accused from fleeing frotn justice. Additionally, it is presumed that bail may be usedfor the purpose of preventive detention, that is, to protect the community from the release of dangerous persons.

Though the original purpose of bail was to insure the accused's appearance in court, this being the only legitimate use of bail today; we contend that it does not satisfy this purpose. The primary result of the bail process is the incarceration of indigent and inexperienced offenders. Not only does this process fail to insure a released offender's appearance in court, it is actually an impediment to justice.

The use of bailfor the purpose of preventive detention, in essence, constitutes a misuse of the bail process since the purpose of bail is simply to insure that the accused will appearfor trial. In fact, in many cases wefind the majority of those not able to make bail are the poor while serious offenders are released on bail.

Both of these aspects should be viewed in light of their apparentfailure to achieve their goals, from the reformist's standpoint. If a process is not meeting its goals, then changes are in order.

The problems of bail bond systems are similar in most states and the proposed solutions are much the same. Bail bond reform by means of establishing an OR (own recognizance) system is becoming a national trend. Once a reform of this kind does become popular with criminal justice personnel, there is a danger that we will stop studying it and assume that it must be good because other states and the federal government are doing it. It is very easy to believe that change itself is progress.

Alabama is struggling to join the national trend to overhaul its bail bond system. This paper starts with a brief description of a small empirical study done for the purpose of providing a rationale for introducing reform legislation. This study is used as a vehicle to illustrate how the problems and process of bail bond reform are national in scope.

The discussion of the national issues of bail bond reform is conceptually divided into three broad categories of problems: (I) bureaucracy issues; (2) cost effectiveness issues; and, (3) justice issues. Bureaucracy issues express concern about government casually displacing and destroying the private bail bond industry without studying the possible impact of such action. Cost effectiveness issues stress that the burden of cost will be shiftedfrom offender to taxpayer. Furthermore, the costs per arrestee are apt to be high and the total costs extremely high. Advocates of reform should, at a minimum, be prepared to tell taxpayers what the rejorm will cost. Justice issuesfocus on the court delay, as discussed by district court judges in testimony before Congress and the possibility that OR may, make criminal courts even less efficient than they are now. The issues raised in this paper deserve study before the private bail bond industry is destroyed.

Several authors have noted that police do much more than capture criminals. Perhaps the most cited role typology was developed by James Q. Wilson, who divided the police role into three categories: law enforcement, order-maintenance and services. Wilson suggested that police departments assumed a particular role through depart mental policies consistent with community values communicated through the govern ment structure. Regardless of the method of communication, according to Wilson's thesis, there should be a consistent policy held by officers in a particular community, and this policy should differ according to the community characteristics within which the particular department is located. This study operationalized a police role perception instrument and conducted a preliminary correlational analysis with indicators of the community, the government structure, the nature of crime in the particular community, along with the personality and job characteristics of the police respondent. What was found was that police role perceptions cannot be characterized as easily as Wilson suggests. Principally, the role perception categories transcended law enforcement and order-maintenance and might best be labelled "proactive" and "reactive" in addition to "peacekeeping" and "service" roles. The categories were not mutually exclusive within the communities, and they were generally related to the level of serious crime in the community -an indication of how much time an officer could spend on the secondary aspects of his job.

The poor are often far removed from the legal system not only as a result of the lack of funds, but also because the law is complicated to the point that it is all but completely alien to them. Yet, in society the legal problems of these people are multitudinous, ranging from everyday relationships with landlords and welfare agencies to the area of criminal cases in which so many impoverished citizens find themselves embroiled.

The Supreme Court, since the milestone case of Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963, focused upon the guarantee to counsel for indigents in the many stages of criminal proceedings from arrest to sentencing, and appeal. Judicial activism in the Escobedo (1964), Miranda (1966), Wade (1967), Coleman (1970), Argersinger (1972), and Mempa (1967) cases provided bridges of procedural precedents that ensure fairness for the poor defendant. The procedural criteria established in those six key cases are sweeping remedies for the vulnerable position in which the destitute accused finds himself upon being arrested. The analysis here suggests that the defendant should have the advantage of a lawyer at every step in the criminal justice system. When an individual is arrested, the atmosphere of the police station is tense, and the stakes are high, sometimes involving many years of imprisonment. At the same time, the charges brought against him appear awesome and mysterious.

More than any recent case on the right to counsel, Brewer v. Williams (1977) displays the dilemma faced by the Court in dealing with the boundaries between the investigatory and accusatory stages of criminal justice. The unique nature of the facts of this 5-4 decision left the judges sharply divided, with Justice Stewart explaining in the majority opinion that the Court should be vigilant in preserving the integrity of the right to counsel. The dissenters, led by Chief Justice Burger, wrote an impassioned attack against extending the exclusionary rule beyond a reasonable threshold.

By expanding the right to counselfor indigent defendants, the Court has, in effect, eradicated what Justice Douglas termed "invidious discrimination" against a disadvantaged class in our society. To appreciate the significance of the fully developed role of today's Court as guardian of the civil liberties of the poor, one need only to look at the insensitivity that the 19th century Court expressed toward indigence when it referred to "the moral pestilence of paupers" in the City of New York v. Miln (1837) case.

The official response by agents of the juvenile justice system to adolescent involvement in victimless and status offenses currently is under attack from a variety of sources. While several complex issues are involved in the debate concerning the proper handling of such offenders (the inherent vagueness of the statutes, and whether or not their codification and enforcement violates constitutionally guaranteed rights, for example), this paper is concerned only with the non-intervention argument that the official processing of such offenders be discontinued. The primary rationale underlying the non-intervention strategy is that not only are such offenders involved in relatively petty forms of delinquency, but also that they are unlikely to participate in more serious types of misbehavior. As such, proponents of this view suggest that since official processing only can have the negative consequences of stigmatization and the production of increased levels and more serious forms of delinquency involvement, it should be avoided.

Self-report data collected from a representative sample of 412 male high school students provide little support for these assumptions. Rather than being specialized, as suggested at least implicitly by the non-intervention approach, these data indicate that delinquency involvement is quite versatile, typically including participation in a wide variety of offense types. While involvement in victimless offenses is the most frequent delinquent activity, such concentration does not preclude significant participation in more serious property and personal offenses. In fact, high levels of involvement in victimless offenses is strongly associated with high levels of participation in property and personal offenses. As a result, and while recognizing that many of the existing delinquency statutes are certainly open to criticism on numerous grounds, any strategy based on the assumption that victimless offenders are unlikely to be involved in other more serious delinquent activities as a rationale for non-intervention appears untenable in light of the findings reported in this study.

Two kinds of skepticism-increasingly prevalent in recent social commentary -have spread to criminology. The skepticism of science subjects all ideas to relentless questioning. Another kind of skepticism is colored by political partisanship. In various forms, radical criminology has gained new visibility recently. This paper welcomes this development when it conveys scientific skepticism beyond the "gadfly" functions of partisan skepticism. Among the versions of radical criminology, the Marxist approach blurs the distinction between the two kinds of skepticism and has other characteristics which illustrate the special difficulties for radical criminologists endeavoring to develop a genuine critical theory. Marx had little interest in criminology, requiring his disciples to tear his concepts out of context. Marxian thought has its own contradictions. Consequently, radical criminology is ambivalent in its rejection of liberal values, in presenting subjectivism as the equivalent of scientific analysis of criminological issues, and in inconsistent utilization of Marxist theory. If a radical theory is to emerge, these difficulties must be overcome.

This paper reviews the literature relating physical appearance to perceptions of criminality or deviance. The content focuses on characteristics of the perceived but includes some data relative to the influence ofperceiver characteristics in the perception process. Methodological procedures are analyzed along with the subject matter of the literature reviewed. The research settings of studies range from college classrooms to juvenile reformatories. The paper concludes with a discussion of future research directions and implications of the existing research for visual identification procedures utilized in police and court settings. One suggestion which emerges from this literature review, for example, is to monitor police lineups and other identification procedures to help offset the influence of physical appearance on the identification process.

Determinate sentencing is one of the most widely advocated contemporary criminal justice reforms. The impetus for reform is provided by increased fear of crime, the failure of rehabilitation and the inequities of sentence disparity. However, fixed sen tencing models also have serious shortcomings. First, it is unlikely that the removal of parole release discretion will substantially reduce sentence disparity. Much of current disparity is related to urban-rural discrepancies and differences in prosecutorial charging and bargaining patterns. These are not changed by fixed-sentence reform. Second, the operation of "good-time" provisions of determinate models and the de emphasis on treatment programming may ultimately have serious implications for the humaneness of imprisonment under this reform model. Finally, the current repressive political environment makes it likely that this reform will create increasingly harsh sentences. While it is clear that current patterns of sentencing need reform, alternatives to judically-determined sentences should be developed to meet the need.

This research extends our understanding of the determinants of police cynicism. The focus of the research is on contrasting levels of cynicism among police officers fiom varying organizational types.

The data for the project came from responses of 189 law enforcement officers (73 from the county agency; 1 16 from the city agency.) Each officer responded to a survey instrument which had him indicate his agreement or disagreement with a set of police cynisicm items. The data were analyzed through gamma correlation coefficients. The findings revealed specific areas of difference between members of the two types of agencies, particularly on the dimensions of police cynicism likely to develop in each.

The significance of this project is that it demonstrates the importance of exploring the relationship of alternative variables, from those traditionally used in the past, with the development and continuance of police cynicism. Further, the research suggests ap propriate avenues of inquiry for additional research.

Currently, a good deal of debate about the use of determinate sentences and attendant proposals is taking place within academic, legislative, and professional circles. This study examines these proposals in terms of the perceptions of prison inmates. Male inmates in a Plains State correctional institution were surveyed in order to determine the extent to which they support proposals for "flat-time" sentencing, "day to day" good time, voluntary treatment, and the elimination of parole. The majority of inmates supported all four proposals, although substantial variation in the amount of support exists across proposals. Variables that serve as indicators of inmate "self-interest" and inmate "experience" provide very little explanation for the variation in inmate responses. Iffuture behavior is consistent with the self-reported data presented in the present study, only limited negative reaction by inmates to the actual implementation of these proposals should be expected.