The Bail Book: A Comprehensive Look at Bail in America's Criminal Justice System

by Shima Baradaran Baughman

Overview

Mass incarceration is one of the greatest social problems facing the United States today. America incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country and is one of only two countries that requires arrested individuals to pay bail to be released from jail while awaiting trial. After arrest, the bail decision is the single most important cause of mass incarceration, yet this decision is often neglected since it is made in less than two minutes. Shima Baradaran Baughman draws on constitutional rights and new empirical research to show how we can reform bail in America. Tracing the history of bail, she demonstrates how it has become an oppressive tool of the courts that disadvantages minority and poor defendants and shows how we can reform bail to alleviate mass incarceration. By implementing these reforms, she argues, we can restore constitutional rights and release more defendants, while lowering crime rates.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107579156
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/20/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	329
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Shima Baradaran Baughman is Professor of Law in the S. J. Quinney College of Law, at the University of Utah.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. History of bail in America; 2. Bail as a constitutional right; 3. The bail process: how pretrial operates and the types of release before trial; 4. Bail and prediction of crime; 5. Individual and societal costs of pretrial detention; 6. Race and bail in the criminal justice system; 7. Bail and the Sixth Amendment rights to counsel and jury trial; 8. Pretrial detention and terrorism in post-9/11 America; 9. International bail; 10. Money bail; 11. Optimal bail: using constitutional and empirical tools to reform America's bail system; Appendix 1; Appendix 2.

Editorial Reviews

'Shima Baradaran Baughman has written a thoughtful and comprehensive study of an often-overlooked aspect of the criminal justice system. The Bail Book is an important work that should be required reading for criminal justice reformers.' Orin Kerr, Frances R. and John J. Duggan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Southern Carolina Law School

'This book is a brilliant exposé of pretrial detention in the United States. It documents a subterranean regime that needlessly incarcerates thousands of individuals, most of them poor, many of them innocent, and a disproportionate number of them black, because the bail industry profits from it and legislators and judges either will not mandate, or are ignorant of, the legal and scientific tools that can address the problem.' Christopher Slobogin, Milton Underwood Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee

'Civil libertarians will predictably love this homage to the Eighth (and Sixth) Amendments but what may be less obvious is why the book is valuable to those of us committed to promoting justice and preventing injustice. Professor Baradaran Baughman shows how more informed and thoughtful pretrial release decisions can reduce crime and avoid wrongful convictions. I recommend the book to anyone who cares about both fairness and justice.' Paul H. Robinson, Colin S. Diver Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania, author of Shadow Vigilantes: How Distrust in the Justice System Breeds a New Kind of Lawlessness (2018)

From the Publisher