Judicial discretion and the unfinished agenda of American bail reform: lessons from Philadelphia's evidence-based judicial strategy

Following in the footsteps of critics of the 1920s and 1930s, Caleb Foote's 1954 study of the bail system in Philadelphia set the agenda for bail reform in the United States focusing on judicial discretion and the inequities of a predominantly financially based pretrial detention system. This article argues that the bail reform movement originating in the 1960s fell short of its objectives in its failure to engage judges in the business of reform. From Foote's study on, Philadelphia has played a role historically in studies of bail, detention, and reform. The article considers the experience of Philadelphia's judicial pretrial release guidelines innovation from the 1980s to the present and its implications as an important contemporary bail reform strategy in addressing the problems of bail, release, and detention practices. The implications of the judge-centered pretrial release guidelines strategy for addressing pretrial release problems in urban state court systems are discussed in light of the original aims and issues of early bail reform.

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