In the United States, local jails process over 11 million admissions in a single year. Most of those who are arrested get the option to post bail and go free until they are arraigned. But those who can’t afford bail sit in jail awaiting trial, which can hurt their ability to mount a defense. It’s harder to collect evidence. It’s harder to meet with lawyers. A defendant can’t do things that might be looked upon favorably by a judge, like entering rehab, or getting a stable job, or attending anger-management classes. This may be particularly damaging for people charged with low-level crimes like misdemeanors.
The frequent detention of these kinds of offenders is also an issue at the federal level. This week, the Department of Justice’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, released an internal audit that provides concrete evidence of how infrequently federal prosecutors avoid jailing low-level offenders by diverting them or allowing them to await trial at home. “In fact, we found nearly half of the districts rarely used pretrial diversion,” Horowitz said in a taped summary of the findings. “We also determined that there were a significant number of additional low-level and non-violent offenders potentially suitable for pretrial diversion.” Offenders who don’t remain in jail before their trials often end up receiving lesser sentences or no prison time, sometimes even avoiding a conviction altogether. The report estimates that tens of millions of dollars would be saved by incarcerating fewer low-level offenders.
[For more of this story, written by Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...worse-crimes/491975/]
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