Indiana Stocking Up on “Get Out of Jail Free” Cards

Indiana Stocking Up on “Get Out of Jail Free” Cards

Get Your Coupon January 1, 2020

Indiana to Embark on a New Era of Catch and Release with State Expansion of Pretrial Release Program

On January 1, 2020, the Indiana Supreme Court will expand their pretrial pilot program to the entire state…setting up what will certainly be a catch & release for most criminal defendants.

The program relies heavily on the use of pretrial risk assessment tools – computers that can apparently make decisions on who will fail to appear or commit a new crime.

First, the program centers around the use of so called “evidence-based” pretrial risk tools.  Pretrial risk assessments are sold as an easy way to get everything we want: make the communities safer, reduce jail populations, increase appearance rates, solve racism, and fix many other issues in the system. The problem is that in practice that has simply not occurred. Civil rights groups, academics, legislators, policy-makers and others across the country are now recommending the ban of these risk tools for several reasons.  

  • In August, 2019, twenty-seven prominent academics issued a statement that jurisdictions must stop using pretrial risk assessment tools because they do not accurately predict, they are racially biased, and they cannot be fixed. The same researchers then sent letter to three jurisdictions demanding that they cease using the tools.

  • In 2018, 100 national civil rights groups, including the NAACP and ACLU, issued a statement cautioning jurisdictions to not use the tools due to concerns of racial bias and validity, and then demanding transparency if the tools are to be used.

  • Academic research indicates that proprietors of these tools pursuant the common law are able to shield the underlying mathematics and data of these tools not only from the public but from criminal defendants who seek to expose the ineffectiveness of these tools at the margins when it means jail or freedom.

  • Over 100 civil rights groups in New York State opposed the expansion or use of pretrial risk assessment tools.

  • The ACLU of Kansas issued a powerful rebuke of risk assessment tools to a judiciary led task force looking at bail reform.

  • Eighty digital groups, including Google, Facebook, IBM, Samsung, etc. issued a statement saying that they believe the assessments potentially bake-in existing bias into the system and prevent real change.

  • One scholar’s research shows that risk assessment algorithms have contributed to generational mass incarceration, rather than the suggestion that these algorithms actually reduce it.

Second, the program encourages the use of preventative detention – a policy that has been proven to actually increase incarceration over time and has not shown any benefits in terms of public safety.

These wasteful programs will harm public safety under the guise of making the system more fair – all at the expense of the Indiana taxpayer.