Giving Compass' Take:

• This Arnold Ventures post gives a short history lesson on pretrial justice (which includes bail reform) and examines where things might be heading.

• How can we harness the energy of grassroots movements to help develop better pretrial justice policies? Which states are making the most progress?

• Here's how pay for success might help make bail reform a reality.

I left the New York City Criminal Justice Agency (CJA) in 1979. Now, 40 years later, I return to the world of pretrial justice. One reason I was so excited to join the Laura and John Arnold Foundation is the Foundation’s role in advancing pretrial reform across the country. At first blush, surprisingly little has changed in the past four decades. We are still debating familiar questions: Should money bail be abolished? Should the risk of pretrial crime be considered in making release decisions? Should we even impose conditions on pretrial release?

Yet much has changed. The most exciting difference is the energy. Today’s reform movement is electric. We now have states like New Jersey, Kentucky, and California that have embraced systematic bail reform legislation. We have a dozen major national foundations supporting pretrial reform efforts. And the larger criminal justice reform movement — the campaign to end mass incarceration, the emergence of new reform-minded prosecutors, the street-level organizing proclaiming Black Lives Matter, the campaigns to restore voting rights in Florida, the bipartisan support for the First Step Act — has given the bail reform agenda an unprecedented infusion of power and legitimacy. Even in the late 1960s, when Attorney General Kennedy led a national bail reform movement and Congress passed the Bail Reform Act of 1966, the movement was very much top down. Now it’s a grassroots movement and part of a larger justice reform era.

Read the full article about the future of pretrial justice by Jeremy Travis at Arnold Ventures.