Study Shows 10% of Criminal Defendants Violate Bail Rules

About 10% of all criminal defendants and more than a third of those with serious criminal records who are conditionally released by federal courts before their trials get into new trouble before their cases are heard, a Justice Department study made public Sunday said.

The report showed that about 35% of defendants with records of three or more felony convictions and one or more previous instances of failure to appear in court had been arrested for a new crime or failed to appear for trial within 120 days after their release on bail.

About 20% of offenders with fewer than three felony convictions were arrested for new crimes or non-appearance within the 120-day bail period, the report said, while only 8% of first offenders similarly violated the conditions of their bail.

The report found that the likelihood of misconduct while on bail increases in proportion to the time defendants are free, with a 10% probability for defendants on bail for 90 days and a 17% probability if the bail runs to nine months.

The data, compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 1979 records in 13 of the nation’s busiest federal court districts, gives statistical support to the Administration’s case in advocating enactment of bail reform legislation last year by the 98th Congress, Atty. Gen. William French Smith said.

“There is unconscionable looseness in the system, which manifests itself in countless preventable murders, rapes and muggings,” Smith said in a statement.

Noting that the bail reform statute establishes a hearing procedure permitting judges to forbid pretrial release of federal defendants if their release would present a danger to the public, Smith said that the report “makes it clear that many defendants posing just such a threat have been routinely released to prey on the community.”

Since the bail reform act took effect last October, federal courts have granted more than 200 prosecutors’ motions for pretrial detention of defendants deemed dangerous, Steven R. Schlesinger, director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said.

The most likely to commit new offenses while awaiting trial, the report found, are young non-Caucasian males. It also found, however, that poorly educated, young non-Caucasian men with low incomes form the group least likely to post bail.

The bureau’s study was based on figures for the last full year for which complete data was available. It analyzed 6,403 cases in 13 of the federal court system’s 97 districts, which the report said collectively handled about a quarter of all the felony and misdemeanor cases processed through U.S. courts in 1979.