This Symposium was held on January 31, 2020 regarding pretrial detention and bail reform. This topic sought to elicit leading scholars on the subject from around the country as well as other important stakeholders in North Carolina and elsewhere. The Symposium shed light on the large, yet often unaddressed problem of pre-trial detention in the United States.
The scope of pretrial detention in America is significant: More than half a million people sit in jail at any given time in America because they have been merely accused of a crime. Such broad pretrial detention deprives people of their liberty before being afforded significant process, undermines the presumption of innocence, increases crime, and wastes tax dollars by locking up a lot of people who are not dangerous. Direct cost estimates for our current state of widespread pretrial detention range between nine and twelve billion dollars per year. And those numbers do not account for the loss of human flourishing that pretrial detention inflicts, including loss of employment and housing as well as defendants’ lost contributions to economic growth or to tax bases. For defendants who are the primary wage earners in their family, widespread use of pretrial detention leaves families to fend for themselves and depend more heavily on public assistance. Moreover, recent empirical evidence demonstrates that defendants detained pretrial are more likely to be convicted than those released pretrial and are likely to serve longer postconviction sentences.
The Symposium brought together criminal law stakeholders, academics, and community groups to discuss the current state of bail reform and how to continue reforming these systems. With each panel our aim is to combine theory with an understanding of facts on the ground regarding various aspects of pretrial detention and from various places across the country.