From Pretrial Justice Istitute:
Introduction
Since the founding of our country, the pretrial process has been in place to safeguard the rights of a person who has not been convicted of a crime, while reasonably assuring that person appears in court1. When people do miss court dates, the law recognizes a difference between nonappearance and willful flight. Nonappearance is absence from court without the intention of avoiding prosecution, for reasons such as illness, lack of childcare, employment obligations, transportation challenges or language barriers. Willful flight is the term for a deliberate evasion of prosecution. Yet many jurisdictions treat nonappearance and willful flight as the same behavior, collapsed into the umbrella term of “failure to appear” or FTA.
The difference between nonappearance and willful flight is critical at two points in the pretrial process: 1) when making initial bail determinations, and 2) when responding to instances of FTA—and failing to make this distinction can have a significant impact on the lives of people facing charges. During the initial bail hearing, if a court determines that someone is a flight risk, the result can be a money bond, additional conditions of pretrial release, or preventive detention. When a person is released and subsequently misses a court date, the default response is often a bench warrant, which can result in arrest, a new charge for absconding or “bail jumping,” or detention.
Many jurisdictions are changing how they anticipate and respond to nonappearance
after someone has been released; however, when it comes to initial bail determina-
tions, the distinction between a risk of willful flight versus nonappearance is rarely acknowledged, either in law, policy, or practice. This has significant consequences for pretrial liberty, and conversely, can result in the likelihood of nonappearance being a driver of mass incarceration. Continue reading >>>
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