"Freedom Denied: How the Culture of Detention Created a Federal Jailing Crisis"

From the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic at the University of Chicago, via NACDL's news update:

In Freedom Denied: How the Culture of Detention Created a Federal Jailing Crisis, the Clinic finds that federal judges routinely violate the very bail laws that they are tasked with upholding, which drives up detention rates, jails people for poverty, and exacerbates racial disparities. Courtwatching data and first-hand accounts from judges and lawyers reveal that a culture of detention pervades federal courtrooms. Courthouse custom overrides the written law, eroding the presumption of innocence.

 

The result is a federal jailing crisis that fuels mass incarceration and inflicts lasting harms on presumptively innocent people, families, communities, and society. Federal judges have a responsibility to vindicate the rights of the accused and restore the norm of liberty enshrined in federal law.